OK, this story is from long, long ago. I don't really remember when it happened, but I think it was before Wife and I were even married—back when we were just "dating". (This means I was living in her apartment and we were regularly fucking, but the whole thing hadn't been formalized yet by a ceremony.) Call it ... well, maybe early-to-mid 1984. All our big turmoil was still in the future. I was still baffled when things went wrong, instead of cynically resigned to it. But the interesting thing is that I'm telling you the story now, not to tell you anything about Wife but actually to talk about me.
What happened?
I remember we were visiting my grandfather. Also, my parents were both there. Maybe we were helping him sort through the immense stacks of useless clutter that he and my grnadmother had accumulated over something close to fifty years of marriage. But it wasn't a holiday, because nobody had done any advanced planning for meals.
In the middle of the afternoon, Father (my dad) realized that the refrigerator had basically no food in it, because my grandfather was very old and lived alone. So he went shopping only when he absolutely had to, and he shopped for one person with a small appetite. I don't know whether he had known in advance that we were coming out to see him, but in any event he hadn't bothered to lay in any supplies. My grnadfather never really thought about other people except when he was forced to, and for many decades he had been able to rely on my grandmother to do all that for him.
So Father realized we were all going to need something for dinner, and he began making a shopping list. (He also planned to do the cooking.) So he asked for suggestions.
What would we like for dinner?
Someone made a suggestion, and he wrote down the ingredients.
How about a salad? Would everyone like a salad too?
Sure, that sounds great.
At this point, Wife—who of course was just a Girlfriend back then, but you all know her as Wife—said, "Pretty much any kind would be fine, except please don't get romaine lettuce. I hate romaine lettuce."
My heart sank. Maybe it's too grandiose or self-important to say that I had a premonition of what was going to happen. But at some level that's exactly what I had. From that moment, I knew the whole evening was going to turn out badly.
And I say that because of course—maybe this doesn't sound like an "of-course" situation to you, but to me it was absolutely predictable!—when Father got back from the store we discovered that he had bought romaine lettuce for our salad!
So the arguing began.
Wife: Why did you buy romaine lettuce when that's the one and only kind of lettuce I told you I don't like?
Father: Well why the hell do you have to be so fussy?
Wife: But you asked for suggestions! Nobody expressed any different preferences, besides me! So why would you buy this? It wasn't to satisfy anyone else's preferences, because nobody else expressed any. Is this just a deliberate slap in the face because you hate me?
Father: My God, you think the world revolves around you! Jesus H. Christ, I bought what I bought. Leave me alone and don't give me so much shit over it. If you don't want to eat any salad, you don't have to!
And why?
Looking back in retrospect ....
In later years, when I reflected on this altercation, I decided that Wife was in the right. If nobody else expressed any other preferences (which we didn't), then it is hard to justify deliberately overriding the one and only preference that was expressed without a really good reason. Father never presented a Really Good Reason. So on reflection, I decided that Father really was in the wrong in this particular case. Even though I was already beginning to understand that Wife complains a lot—about pretty much everything*—in this case (so I finally decided years later) her objections were absolutely fair.
But that was later. In the moment, my emotional reaction was to wonder how she dared to complain when obviously she had brought this on herself!
I didn't say this out loud. I never said it to her. But I thought it at the time.
Emotional archaeology
And this is the interesting question: Why did I think that?
I don't really know. But I know that at the time I thought it was too obvious to need to be articulated out loud: if you tell Father that the only lettuce you hate is romaine, of course he is going to buy romaine.
Why?
One answer says that his hearing was weak, because he was old. He heard the word "romaine" but didn't hear the words "I hate." But this hypothesis is weak because if it really did happen in 1984 then he wasn't yet even 50. His hearing shouldn't be so bad as all that in his late 40's.
Another answer says that his memory was weak, because he was old. He remembered the word "romaine" but didn't remember the context in which it was mentioned. But this hypothesis is also weak. Didn't he make a list? Couldn't he have written on it, "not romaine"? And again, he wasn't that damned old!
Besides, my emotional reaction was that this was something obvious, something that anyone should have known was going to happen. For me to feel that way, the event has to have represented a pattern that had been established long before.
(And yes, if I had thought about it I might have recognized that it wasn't obvious to Wife, because she was only now getting to know my family and our peculiar dynamics. But see—that's the point I'm trying to make. I didn't realize until reflecting on the event years later that there was anything peculiar going on here! In the moment, I had no idea that my family's dynamics were at all unusual. I thought this was all normal, dammit.)
OK fine, I've ruled out the easy, face-saving excuses as impossible. What, then, explains Father acting in so malicious and contrary a way? Why did he do it?
Any answer is necessarily speculative. I never asked him about this while he was alive. Perhaps I should have, though I imagine that he would have sought refuge in "not remembering" the event. But given that I have to interpolate an answer based on other known data points about his character and history, I have a couple of ideas. (Neither excludes the other.)
- One possibility is that he wanted to discourage children from having preferences. He was born during the Depression, and I'm sure that for much of his childhood he had to accept whatever he got. He may have figured it was his duty to pass on a similar discipline to his own children. Also, I remember a different context when he said, "Well I know that people can talk themselves into thinking they don't like this or that, when they really know nothing about it and might be perfectly happy with it."** Either of these positions would make a fine starting point for someone who wanted to justify ignoring the preferences of other people—especially if they were young enough to be his children!***
- Another consideration is that Father hated bosses. Although he never said this overtly, I believe he felt weak in the presence of authority. So he hated to be told what to do. And therefore when anybody did tell him what to do, he looked for a way to defy or undercut the order. It is possible that when Wife said she really hated romaine lettuce, he reacted by thinking "Goddammit, I'm not going to let that arrogant little girl push me around! Who the hell does she think she is, anyway? If she hates romaine lettuce, then that's exactly what I'm going to buy!"
As I say, neither of these hypotheses excludes the other. One way or another, though, I learned that expressing an opinion was likely to backfire.
So what?
Does any of this matter, except in an abstract way as "emotional archaeology"? I think so.
Think about all the times I've talked about how hard I find it to set and pursure goals. (You can search this blog for "goals" or click the tag "failure.") Think about all the times I've talked about struggling to define my professional future in my career. (For example, here and especially here.) Is it unreasonable to think that I would have had an easier time with any of these topics if I hadn't "known" (at some subliminal level) that expressing a preference necessarily meant it would be used against me? If I hadn't "known" that expressing a preference necessarily meant I would get the opposite?
If I hadn't learned, from an early age, that my job in life is to endure what comes rather than to choose what I want?
Of course I can't blame Father for all of this. After the age of forty, every man is responsible for his own face. At most, he may have inclined me is a certain direction. But I could always have made a change, if I had wanted to.
But it is interesting to reflect on it all.
__________
* Lily, Wife's mother, used to tell Wife, "You'd complain if you was being hung with a new rope." Wife always answered, "You mean I'd complain if I were being hanged with a new rope. And yes, of course I'd complain if I were being hanged! I don't want to be hanged!" Lily's spoken grammar was a lot better whenever Wife wasn't within earshot, but she seemed to emphasize her proletarian bona fides whenever Wife could hear her.
** Of course it's true that "people can" do this in the most general sense. But if you hold to this as an article of faith, then you have to rule out all self-knowledge as illusory (or potentially so). The irony is that he proposed this notion about people talking themselves into things when I was looking for a job and he encouraged me to look for work in Sales. I tried to reply that Sales was a poor choice for someone who was overly-intellectual and suffered from social anxiety. He said yeah, yeah, yeah, people can talk themselves out of all kinds of things. It was not one of our more successful conversations.
*** Another time he tried to give me general life-advice, on the grounds that "whatever else might be true," he was older than I was and therefore had lived longer and had more experience. I wanted to say, "Yes, but your track record for making decisions is abysmal! Why should I listen to your advice when you have been so obviously incapable of transmuting that experience into wisdom?" But I didn't say it. I sat still and listened politely, and then promptly forgot everything he said.
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