Father, You're Wrong

When it is revealed that lots of years of school doesn't prepare you for 8th grade math — "you're doing it the wrong way, dad," said Thing 1, correctly — that children are always telling dad how wrong he is comes into focus.

But this isn't about who is right or even how important the issue, just an interesting way to define the relationship. I was wrong about the math problem but still felt like I must have gotten something right when I received a (relatively unironic, in the sense that it came without an eye-roll) thanks for trying to help. I like to think the emotional health of both father and child is explained in how and when the younger challenges the older.

So, it says something positive about the relationship of Jesse Jackson Sr. and Jr. when namesake challenges name and writes that Barack Obama is keeping in mind the struggle of African-American's when he talks of the struggles of the economically less privileged. Not that he is challenging a core belief, such as when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, "My father opposed partition [of Israel and Palestine] and was wrong"

What is also telling is that Jackson is able to discuss his belief in his father's error while the latter was still alive. In an interview for his new book, "Born Standing Up," (the autobiography, not the picture book for kids, "The Alphabet A to Y"), comic, writer, star Steve Martin says that he couldn't have written of how wrong he thought his father often was or how unhappy he was when growing up, "[The book] would have been different. I would have had to negotiate certain things. But who knows what my father would have thought? And ultimately he comes off looking better. The worst thing that can happen to a father is to have a child who's a writer." Or, maybe not.

** Not to get carried away. It is good to hear a respectful "you're wrong." It is a nice change from the "you're an idiot" that Things 1 and 2 and many other children often lightly toss in their father's face. **