Mistaken Malevolence

My father and I stood, with my arm in his, underneath the blindingly bright lights of my high school football stadium.  It was homecoming, and I had been nominated to be on the court.  Hundreds of fans watched as the announcer touted my involvement in the school and community and we took our places on the thirty-yard line.  I had prepared for weeks for the occasion.  From my teenage perspective, it was the single most important day of my life.  We stood there in silence until, out of nowhere, my dad slapped me in the face. 

“What was that for?” I hissed, with a murderous glance in his direction.

“You had a mosquito,”   he said, grinning triumphantly.  It was evident that he deemed himself a valiant hero, slayer of evil and rescuer of the damsel in distress.  I smeared the remains of his ill-fated foe from my cheek and wished I could crawl under a rock and die.

My dad has an odd way of showing affection.  He’s not very touchy-feely, nor does he have any interest in vocalizing his love for others.  His love is more subtle.  One might even mistake it, as I often did, for malevolence.

I am fairly certain that my dad enjoyed embarrassing me.  An incredibly vain child, I was mortified every time my dad drove me and my siblings to the bus stop in his dilapidated old station wagon.  I begged him to get a more attractive car or just to let me walk, but he flatly refused.  He could afford a nicer vehicle, but he intentionally chose the ugliest car he could find.  I just knew that he was conspiring against me, plotting to destroy my social life at every opportunity. 

Sometimes he was sneaky about humiliating me.  I would think things were going along fine and suddenly I’d find myself blindsided by some malicious act.  When I was in computer class in eighth grade, my teacher sent home a letter requesting ten dollars for ink cartridges.  To see my dad’s reaction, you would have thought someone had threatened to take his life’s savings or, at the very least, poked him with a very sharp stick.  He paced around the kitchen, yelling and flailing his arms about, arguing about how his tax dollars are supposed to pay for such things.  My mom did her best to calm him down, and I thought the whole thing was settled.  A few minutes later, though, I was horrified to discover him on the phone with a member of the school board, yelling in high-pitched astonishment at how they could dare charge a taxpayer for school expenses. 

Sometimes his cruel acts were more a way of exerting his dominance over his household.  When I turned sixteen and got my first car, he forced me to learn how to change my car’s tires and check the oil.  “Come here and help me change your tires,” he said. What he meant was, “I’ll watch while you nearly kill yourself doing it on your own.”  I fumbled around awkwardly with the tools as I tried to follow the directions in the owner’s manual.  “You’re not doing it right,” he shouted with brows furrowed and teeth set to the side. 

“I’m doing the best I can!” I shrieked helplessly.  I continued to work at it until I was able to get the wheels back on the car, but they would almost certainly have fallen off if my dad had not snatched the lug wrench away and tightened the bolts effortlessly.  It was unclear whether his help was a real attempt to assist or merely an effort to mock my pathetic physical strength.  I assumed the latter.

In literature and cinema, villains are often simply misunderstood, rather than actual embodiments of evil.  Darth Vader, for example, is known to be on “the dark side” in the Star Wars movies, but his evil ways began from a desire to save his wife.  Dr. Frankenstein’s monster gets a bad reputation, but even despite being repulsive to his own creator, he is a benevolent, compassionate creature until he is rejected from everyone he loves.  These characters weren't born evil, they were just misjudged by those around them.  I think my dad falls into this category of accidental villain.

Even though my dad’s behavior may seem cruel at first glance, the motivation behind it has always been pure and good.  He embarrassed me to teach me humility.  He called the school board to teach me to stand up for myself.  He made me learn how to take care of my car to teach me how to be self-sufficient.   Even slapping me in front of all those people was his way of showing that he cared about me and didn’t want me to get hurt.  My dad is largely misunderstood.  All his actions—even the things I always thought were pure evil—were his way of being my hero.  Realizing this has made a huge difference in my perception of my father.  Next time he slaps me in the face, I’ll know it’s for my own good.