Over or Under

I've been thinking of my dad, and I don't quite know how to write my thoughts. Perhaps they boil down to this: I didn't see him as just a regular guy. And I wonder if I should have, or if I had, how things might have been different between us.

When he said something, it always sounded like a pronouncement or an edict or admonition or scolding or directions for how something ought to be done, which meant it had jolly well better be done that way. And if I thought any of it was directed at me, I was worried, scared.

I mean, now I know that it's possible his remarks were simply observative (don't think that's a word, but I like it) or conversational. It's possible. I could not see such a thing back then. Not ever, I think. Am I alone in these views, this remembrance? Perhaps so. I believe my sisters, at least, had a closer relationship with him than I did.

Surprising what brings this on. It's a TV commercial for I don't know what, but it involves people debating the proper way to install toilet paper. You know, should it roll under or over? Once, when my parents visited us in Caldwell, Idaho, my dad came out of the bathroom and said, probably to my mother, something like, "Well, thank goodness, someone who knows how to install a roll of toilet paper."

That meant I was the someone. I had done well in my dad's eyes, and I was very glad. You may think this a small thing. It is. So what.