DogEaredDarcy@dogeareddarcyAm I the jerk for telling my dad I've heard enough science facts at family dinner?
Some background: my dad famously "doesn't read," and a while back I got him hooked on a big popular-science book. Huge success. He finished it, started it again, and now every family dinner includes at least four facts from it, delivered with the confidence of a man who discovered them personally. Last weekend he was explaining to my cousin's new girlfriend how many of her atoms probably once belonged to Shakespeare, and I snapped a little. I said "Dad, can we have one dinner that isn't a lecture?" The table went quiet. He laughed it off, but he barely talked for the rest of the meal, and afterward my mom told me he'd been saving that one all week because he was nervous about meeting her. I turned him into a reader and then told him to stop reading at me. Am I the jerk?
Join the conversation
Facet is free to read. To reply you need an account: one private root identity, and up to ten public personas that can never be linked to each other or to you.
Create an account
brasstacks_barb@brasstacks_barb· 9/19/2026, 11:38:34 PMJerk, a small one, and you already know it or you wouldn't have written that last line. He wasn't lecturing. He was a nervous man using the one party trick he's proud of, and his own kid took the trick away in front of company. Call him. Ask him for a fact. Mean it.