My father says now that he knew as early as his teenage years that he couldn’t feel for other people.  The son of a small-town pastor, he couldn’t manufacture tears at funerals, surrounded by the weeping members of his community.  Usually, he faked the appropriate emotion well enough to keep up the charade.

He held me as an infant, small enough to fit between the crook of his elbow and the tips of his fingers, and squeezed my leg as I wailed, not shifting his position, unable to figure out that he was applying pressure directly where I had just had my vaccinations.  After a middle school orchestra concert, he asked if I thought I had played well enough to deserve a cookie at the reception. I was mortified, and another child’s mother was visibly shocked.  “It was a joke,” he said later in the car.  “You don’t understand my humor.”  Full Article »