Maybe he does stuff like that all the time.
Maybe he really believed the only reason I didn’t call him out was that I hadn’t noticed.
What stayed with me wasn’t the line.
It wasn’t even the seat.
It was the assumption underneath both.
He saw me speaking Spanish and decided that meant he could talk about me in English right beside me.
Then later, when he wanted my window seat, he assumed I would simply accept whatever he told me to do.
I didn’t need to embarrass him publicly.
I didn’t need to ruin his flight.
I didn’t need some elaborate revenge.
All I had to do was stop making things easy for him.
The funniest part is that Dad still insists he would have handled it better.
His version apparently involved “a short lecture.”
I have known my father my entire life.
There is no such thing as a short lecture.
