His Word Against Mine
My dad is the type of guy who is always right when talking to his children. I can’t say anything against him because it will be his word against mine, and his word will always win. Doesn’t matter the topic or the research.
I can find 12 government articles about something and he’ll say I’m stupid for believing in the internet. He’s also the type of guy who, when he ends up being wrong, will never take the blame.
I’m watering the plants when suddenly the hose stopped working? I’m a piece of garbage who broke it on purpose. He tried to fix something with his laptop and ended up breaking it?
Oh, it was an accident, the laptop broke itself anyways, my fault for recommending it four years ago. So anyway, one day I went to a new eye doctor with my dad because there was a possible problem with my eyes (false alarm by the way, I’m fine).
Note, the doctor is Chinese and so is my dad. So I started to ask a few questions. My first one was something like this: “Does reading in the dark worsen your eyesight? Because my dad says it does, but from what I found on the internet, he’s wrong.”
My dad cuts me off. In the middle of elaborating on my first question, he says in Mandarin (he speaks Mandarin but understands English fully), “Ha ha, teens are a handful. Just tell him he’s wrong so he can stop being bothersome about this.”
The eye doctor wants none of this. He slam dunked on my dad. He says in fluent Mandarin, “Actually, your son is right. While it can strain your eyes, it doesn’t cause nearsightedness. Sometimes your children can be right you know, you need to listen to them.”
Then my dad says, “Well, the way he said it was disrespectful towards me, he wasn’t being filial.” Then the eye doctor STRAIGHT UP SAID TO ME (in fluent English) “You know, I think filial piety is kind of a joke. Anyways, back to your questions…” Shut my dad down, then went back to me.
Then as my dad tries to cut him off later to demean me, the eye doctor says, “let me speak please” or “wait until I finish my sentence.” He then says to me in an annoyed tone, “parents think they know everything.”
After we were done, my dad went to apologize for my behavior, to which the eye doctor replies “You know, he wasn’t being disrespectful. That’s the problem with Chinese parents, you need to loosen up and stop trying to control your children’s lives.” My dad had no words after this.
Didn’t even want to talk about it. I kept mentioning the Mandarin-English stuff in this story because here we have someone Chinese-American, who’s older than my dad, basically shutting down his narcissistic values and getting visibly annoyed.
I couldn’t believe this happened afterward. Except it did happen. Highlight of my life.