He would call me into the bathroom while he was shitting to lecture me. A book in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
I had to smell his shit and breath his cigarette smoke while I got told what a piece of shit I was.
I hated it.
In his lectures, I was wrong no matter what. If I tried to defend myself I’d hear:
You have an excuse for everything.
Or he would counter with any argument no matter how bizarre or untrue. His conviction always made it seem true.
Like when I tried to solicit his praise by telling him my pride of learning how to do averages in math that day.
Okay dad, the average of zero, one, and two is… one!
“No it’s not. Zero isn’t a number.”
We argued about it until I cried. I was wrong. No matter what.