No, it's awful

This post about work got me thinking about the first time I felt like the smartest person in the room. And I remembered how awful it was. 

I was in junior high. My dad came home from work, bubbling with news. His friend Lennie had decided to take the plunge and run for local office. My dad thought Lennie was such fun and had such great people skills, he might actually win. Wouldn't that be great?

Um, no. I'd heard Lennie's jokes. Almost all of them were at the expense of black people and the n-word usually featured prominently. I knew from my parents and from church (which my parents forced strongly encouraged me to attend) that people who used the n-word were ignorant, were hurting people, and were making the world a sadder place.

I also believed that any elected office is a public trust. I've always been a Kennedy girl -- I believe that public service is a privilege, and it's the responsibility of officeholders to work within the system to do for us what we can't do for ourselves. This has been dear to my heart my whole life. I didn't see (don't see) how a man who is contemptuous of his constituents could do this.

So I told my father that no, I thought it was disturbing that Lennie could win. That I didn't think someone who used the n-word so freely should hold political office.

My dad truly said this to me: "That will balance all those voters who say, 'Get Whitey,' won't it?"

I was dumbstruck. Literally. I had no response.

He compounded the ugliness by saying, "Hadn't thought of that, had you?" 

Congratulations on besting a 12-year-old. 

But even worse than my father's smugness and immorality was the sheer dumbness of his argument. An adult actually thought it was OK to tell a child that two wrongs make a right.

My dad was responsible for me. He was supposed to teach me how to navigate the shoals as I take off into the seas of adulthood, and this was what he came up with?

I hated knowing that, in some very important ways, I was smarter than my dad. I have never liked being the smartest person in the room. I've always found it uncomfortable and scary.

Me and my dad. It was my pivotal Jane Craig/Broadcast News moment.