FATHER'S DAY!!!

If the State says there are five fingers, there are five.

We watched the 1956 Edmond O'Brien version of 1984 last night, and I was reminded of a time in my childhood when my father didn't think I was sufficiently cowed into submission, so he called me into the center of the living room for a mind control session. He pointed to the rug and asked me what color it was. I said green. He said, "If I say that rug is blue, then it is blue. Now what color is it?" Because he was a huge intimidating bully and I was a fragile bespectacled child of course I was forced to lie to avoid his ever-simmering wrath. Just like the scene in which Winston Smith is tortured into saying that four fingers are five. One thing I regret about my relationship with my father is that I didn't realize at the time that his bailing out on our family to go have hot sex with another man's wife was the best thing he could have done for us. I really regret all the sorrow I felt over that, and I still feel embarrassed at the way I kept trying to maintain a positive image of him because you are supposed to love your father. I only wish he had left us sooner, before he had ruined my life.