My kid thinks I’m an asshole.
I know this because he told me so a few years ago. Indirectly, of course. Through a Christmas gift.
I still have the gift, and I display it proudly. It’s a magnet, two of them, actually, the kind you buy in a novelty store or card shop, the ones with witty and acerbic quotes on them, decorated with Fifties-era advertising illustrations or sad-eyed cats. You know the sort.
My gift was from my eldest son, Rid, who was about 14 at the time. I don’t remember if he wrapped the gift or if it was dropped into my stocking, but it included two of these novelty magnets. The first had an image of the Buddha, and its message was “What Would Buddha Do?”
Now that’s a nice magnet, with a thought-nudging message that connects nicely with my worldview and my personal philosophy. I’m not a Buddhist, but the eightfold path appeals to me — Right Thought, Right Actions, Right Work, and so on through all the guidelines for doing the right thing, living a virtuous life.
But for Rid, this magnet was just the setup. The punchline, the coup de grâce of this ironic gift, was the other magnet, which features a handsome middle-aged man with a 100-watt smile, straight out of a 1957 Better Homes and Gardens magazine ad for dentifrice or steel-belted radial tires. The caption on the magnet — the implied answer to the question “What Would Buddha Do?” posed by the setup magnet — is “Admitting you’re an asshole is the first step.”
I got a kick out of this gift for a couple of reasons. It seemed at the time a sign that my son was taking that step from boy to man. His humor was maturing, if you can think of the gratuitous use of the word “asshole” as mature — and I do. The magnet was edgy, ironic, and, as a Christmas gift to your dad, daring. My son was feeling confident enough to poke a little fun at his old man.
I stuck the magnets — the Buddha above, the asshole below, as Rid insisted they be displayed — to the metal frame around my bathroom mirror, where I could ponder their philosophy each morning while I groomed.
Privately, I suspected there was a not-so-hidden message in this gift. Between you and me, I have what could generously be called some personality flaws. I can be arrogant, which I think of as an excess of confidence, but which I suspect others think of as confidence without cause. I’ve been called a know-it-all, though I object to that term. I don’t know it all, but I’m working on it. My younger siblings used to call me — sarcastically, tauntingly — Mr. Perfect. That still stings. Trying to always do the right thing, and to do things right, does not seem like behavior that should make you the target of verbal abuse. But it does. I speak from long experience.
Of course, I’m no Buddha. I always try to do the right thing, but suffice it to say that I don’t always succeed. I can be judgmental. I can be impatient. There’s the arrogance, the perfectionism, the know-it-all-ism. And I have a sharp tongue, a honed sarcasm that usually exits my brain as humor but sometimes lands as rudeness or cruelty.
In other words, if you’re fond, as I am, of a directness of vocabulary, I’m kind of an asshole.
I’m working on it.
So I was proud of myself that I took that gift from my son in the right spirit, that I was willing to have a laugh at myself, that I could face my flaws and even display them openly. In the privacy of my master bathroom. Where no one else can see them.
It just seems like the right thing to do.