I’ve added some material to the ending of "Don’t Play with Matches." Only the part about Penny will be new to my Niblets friends.

 

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.

 

She winced. “It’s not nice to say that.”

 

“But it’s true,” I said, puzzled by her response. Then I was surprised when we drifted apart over the next year.

 

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.”  

 

Another time, someone pointed out an error on a survey that a colleague and I had pointed out. “Penny made a mistake,” I wrote to the surveyor, cc’ing Penny. To me that was not blame, but just a simple, unloaded statement of fact. It never occurred to me that Penny might get upset.

 

That came back to haunt me. I learned the bad news, not from Penny, but from the company’s owner. When we spoke in his office, he said, “I know you’re sensitive, but….” His voice trailed off.

 

Now I imagine he wanted to say, “I know you’re sensitive to how others feel toward you. Why can’t you show the same sensitivity to others?

 

In a sense, I was lucky because as an adult I got punished for my true, yet insensitive statements. Harem man shunned me. Penny’s boss probably laid me off more quickly than if I hadn’t caused that ruckus.

 

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.