Nothing happened today, except the usual, I noticed a million things and extracted as much meaning as possible from them without even thinking about it. Mom and I were in the kitchen and Dad was watching a world cup soccer game on TV. He was excited about it, telling us everything that was happening and why it was so exciting and out-of-the-ordinary for these things to be happening. We were unloading groceries and were markedly less enthusiastic about the soccer game than he was. I said to Mom, "Does he know that we aren’t interested in sports?” It was a rhetorical question. She did not choose to indulge my attempt to bond with her, to be in solidarity with her. “I tell him about things he doesn’t care about,” she said. “I know, but it’s just interesting – how he can be so interested in something that we don’t find interesting at all. Don’t you think?” This comment was a skillful (I thought) back-track and effectively changed the meaning of my original comment by appearing only to expand on it - but really by being different completely. It appeared, with the second comment, that this was what I had meant all along – that, wasn’t it interesting that people could have such different tastes in entertainment? It was not interesting. But I had executed this self-rescue rather smoothly and was pleased enough with the result. “Well, yes, I guess so.” She left it at that. I left the kitchen, feeling neither good nor bad about what had occurred. Like most things, it was insignificant to all parties except me. To me it meant that my mom was most inclined to take the mom-and-dad-against-child position, felt the need to extinguish my potentially undermining or rude comment.
Nothing else happened today.
I looked at some old photos of my parents from their wedding day and lamented over how much better-looking they were than I am, then went directly to the mirror to see for myself that I was right.