Cramming To Get Into Heaven: a proposal.
Jul. 23rd, 2012 02:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreadedcandiru2As we know, John has a very hard time interacting with his children because he shares the counterproductive and stupid belief that if he and his children have the least bit of a difference of opinion, the offsprings are arguing with them and must be punished for defiance. We also know that the two dimwitted yuppie jackholes either grumble about being misunderstood by meddling outsiders or reveal their true colors when they scream and yelp about how they've been backed into a corner by the unstoppable menace that is a bunch of placid children who use their free will to see the world the way they see it, not how their parents wish they would.
We also remember that John shares with Elly a default mistrust in the honesty of his children. Somewhere along the way, the collection of folk beliefs, misapprehensions and self-serving shibboleths that comprise what he oh-so-charitably refers to as a mind wound up containing the concepts "Children can't be trusted to see the world properly" and "children are only truthful when they're in pain". This, along with his refusal to see that he's a self-serving, oblivious, heartless, boorish, foul-tempered, callous, bullying piece of crap, tends to make him a brute of a father who thinks that he's respected rather than feared. Quite simply, he can't remember any occasion in which he might have been in the wrong let alone have anything to apologize for. Where Elly can look back and allow herself to admit that just possibly her life would have been easier if she didn't behave as if her children were trying to destroy her, the rat bastard idiot she married is sort of smug about his legacy of cheap shots, deceit and threats.
The fun thing is that this idiot thinks that while other parents have made horrible mistakes and should atone to their kids for acting like they were under the gun when they clearly weren't, we ended the strip without his ever having realized that he's got a lot of crap to live down. Given that Jim and he are a lot alike and Jim turned out okay in the end, there is a fairly good chance that the same man who eventually realized that Elly might just have a point about how housework is an overwhelming burden might figure out that he could have handled things better when his children were smaller.
The way I see it happening is that sooner or later, he's going to blunder into a mild difference of opinion that's quickly escalating into a pointless screaming match. Michael will have it in his fat head that one thing happened, Meredith will say quite another and, since Mike has internalized John's self-serving belief that "disagreement is defiance", what could have been a non-event is quickly mutating into Michael losing his shit because his child doesn't admit that because Daddy says it, two plus two is five. Let's also say as a for instance that John saw what happened and that it happened the way Meredith said it did, not in the way that would allow Mike to win all the time. Hearing his own arguments used to steamroll a child into admitting that she's a bad kid because Daddy has to be right all the time or the world will spin off its axis coming from the child he used to spar with might just give John pause to reflect.
Should this happen, we'd have him realize "CHEE! Mike looked as if he thought admitting that Meredith was right would mean that he could never be right again. That's weird; it's almost as weird as how he can't seem to allow himself to be laughed at. I wonder why the expression on his face looked so familiar, though. Maybe if I were to look at some old photos and home movies, I could figure out how he got to thinking something that freaking dumb." Given that at that point in his life, the pressures he wasn't handling well and displaced onto his family would have abated, he wouldn't be able to view the events he saw through the distorting lens of panic and see someone who shared something with his wife: a need to blow things out of proportion because he seemed to have thought that he was alone in feeling inadequate.
Since it isn't in him to run around like the Ancient Mariner on the rare occasions when he realizes that he's responsible for the mess his life is, we can probably look forward to Mike, Deanna, Liz and Anthony having to contend with what they see as an old fart undermining their attempts to establish order and what everyone else would see as another old dude who was trying to make up for bad parenting by being a voice of reason.
We also remember that John shares with Elly a default mistrust in the honesty of his children. Somewhere along the way, the collection of folk beliefs, misapprehensions and self-serving shibboleths that comprise what he oh-so-charitably refers to as a mind wound up containing the concepts "Children can't be trusted to see the world properly" and "children are only truthful when they're in pain". This, along with his refusal to see that he's a self-serving, oblivious, heartless, boorish, foul-tempered, callous, bullying piece of crap, tends to make him a brute of a father who thinks that he's respected rather than feared. Quite simply, he can't remember any occasion in which he might have been in the wrong let alone have anything to apologize for. Where Elly can look back and allow herself to admit that just possibly her life would have been easier if she didn't behave as if her children were trying to destroy her, the rat bastard idiot she married is sort of smug about his legacy of cheap shots, deceit and threats.
The fun thing is that this idiot thinks that while other parents have made horrible mistakes and should atone to their kids for acting like they were under the gun when they clearly weren't, we ended the strip without his ever having realized that he's got a lot of crap to live down. Given that Jim and he are a lot alike and Jim turned out okay in the end, there is a fairly good chance that the same man who eventually realized that Elly might just have a point about how housework is an overwhelming burden might figure out that he could have handled things better when his children were smaller.
The way I see it happening is that sooner or later, he's going to blunder into a mild difference of opinion that's quickly escalating into a pointless screaming match. Michael will have it in his fat head that one thing happened, Meredith will say quite another and, since Mike has internalized John's self-serving belief that "disagreement is defiance", what could have been a non-event is quickly mutating into Michael losing his shit because his child doesn't admit that because Daddy says it, two plus two is five. Let's also say as a for instance that John saw what happened and that it happened the way Meredith said it did, not in the way that would allow Mike to win all the time. Hearing his own arguments used to steamroll a child into admitting that she's a bad kid because Daddy has to be right all the time or the world will spin off its axis coming from the child he used to spar with might just give John pause to reflect.
Should this happen, we'd have him realize "CHEE! Mike looked as if he thought admitting that Meredith was right would mean that he could never be right again. That's weird; it's almost as weird as how he can't seem to allow himself to be laughed at. I wonder why the expression on his face looked so familiar, though. Maybe if I were to look at some old photos and home movies, I could figure out how he got to thinking something that freaking dumb." Given that at that point in his life, the pressures he wasn't handling well and displaced onto his family would have abated, he wouldn't be able to view the events he saw through the distorting lens of panic and see someone who shared something with his wife: a need to blow things out of proportion because he seemed to have thought that he was alone in feeling inadequate.
Since it isn't in him to run around like the Ancient Mariner on the rare occasions when he realizes that he's responsible for the mess his life is, we can probably look forward to Mike, Deanna, Liz and Anthony having to contend with what they see as an old fart undermining their attempts to establish order and what everyone else would see as another old dude who was trying to make up for bad parenting by being a voice of reason.
