Hello, loyal readers! What do you think of the material I’m adding to "Don’t Play with Matches"?

Below is what I plan to add. 

 

He lowers the match until it touches the tip of my finger. 

I leave my finger there for a moment. Too stunned to move. I don’t cry out. I don’t say anything. I don’t even feel anything.

Then I reflexively pull my hand back and scowl at Dad. Just for a moment. Then I put my expressionless mask back on. I’ve learned by observation that I shouldn’t question Dad. Not even Mom can get away with it. Dad is always right.

"See, I told you I could do it." Dad looks relaxed, like he has forgotten the pressures of his busy medical practice.

          I am frozen again. 

"Okay, let’s have you practice striking matches," he says. 

We go on as if nothing has happened. But that’s just one more incident of Dad paying attention to me only to hurt me.

Technically speaking, he hasn’t done anything wrong. He offered to show me how to make a match burn twice. I took his bait. He was only doing what I asked him to do. No matter that I’d learn that my feelings don’t matter.

Maybe I learned the lesson too well. Sensitive about my own feelings, I had a hard time imagining the feelings of those around me. Just like Dad.

“But you’re still fat,” I said when my friend Jan came home from weight-loss camp the summer before high school.

I was still saying the same kind of thing as a corporate employee. For example, to a co-worker: “I can’t believe how much time you spend smoking cigarettes and gossiping with your harem.”  

But I got lucky. As an adult I got punished for my true, yet insensitive statements. I was shunned by co-workers. One time the bad word got back to my boss.

My experience was very different from that of my surgeon father. In  surgery, arrogance is tolerated. Maybe even encouraged. Nobody ever slapped back at my father. But they whacked me. And I’m glad they did. I’m a nicer person for it.