After
the old insulation and axles were out from under our previously
mobile home my dad required me to re-insulate and but up some nice
permanent skirting. He gave me vague instructions and left for the
day. Cole, my brother Matt and I went right to work under my
direction cutting boards setting posts and screwing on panels. I was
so proud of how much I had gotten done and how good it looked I could
not wait for my dad to come home to show him that the job was about
two-thirds in the bag. He rolled up after about ten hours and
immediately started complaining. My dad is a constitutional
contrarian by heart and feels most validated when he is correcting
someone and setting them strait. I discovered this at an early age
and to keep from having to redo major jobs I would usually leave an
obvious flaw in the work that would be easily repaired and them let
him catch it fell validated and then we could be done. In my
excitement to show him what a good job I had done I forgot the decoy
problem and he started scrutinizing the whole project. He immediately
told me I had done it all wrong and the the boards should not have
been parallel but have staggered joints. A specification he had never
mentioned before he left. He started right in with taking off boards
and complaining about how the whole day was wasted because I
couldn't follow simple instructions and how I would not be paid and
that I would have to take it all down and start over. I had plummeted
from the tippy tops of pride right strait down into the deepest
depths of sulfurous pulsating rage. I had a hammer in my hand and
wanted more than anything in the world to bury it in my dad's fat,
stupid, ungrateful, wrecking-my-whole-days-work, head. He was
kneeling in front of me turned away unscrewing the panels and ranting
about some part of the not-done-right he had not covered yet and it
took all of my will power to set the hammer down and walk away for a
good cry. He came to talk to me a couple of hours later and told me
sorta-sorry with a blame-pology that consisted of the fact that he
was sorry I had not listened and that I had screwed it up and he had
to yell at me. Thank-you? You're welcome? What should I say? I didn't
know at the time that the proper response to the absurdity that is
the blame-pology is to say something even more absurd as a
forgiveness. For example, I should have said I accept your apology
for being a massive a-hole and an insensitive jerk. What I did say
was that he could put the rest of the F-Wording siding up his own
self. Somehow that didn't smooth over the situation and he grounded
me for a week for saying the F-wording siding and back sassing him. I
wasn't sorry. I am not a person that is good at staying mad though so
the next day when I had simmered down I helped him put on the siding
the way he wanted and got paid for both days.
