My father has interrupted compliments about me for as long as I can remember. Someone would start saying something kind, and he would immediately tell a story about my brother, change the subject, or mention something he’d read that morning. My husband noticed it years ago, and once he pointed it out, I started counting. At my nephew’s graduation party, he interrupted eleven separate compliments about me in a single afternoon. I never confronted him because I didn’t want to sound like I was keeping score. At my father’s eightieth birthday, I finally realized someone else had been keeping the score for me.
My aunt stood up to thank me for organizing the entire celebration. She got three words into her speech before my father interrupted her with a story about my brother. She stopped speaking and simply looked at him. The room went quiet because everyone knew exactly what had happened. Then she said, “You’ve been doing this to her since she was a child, and I’m tired of helping you pretend you don’t.” My father laughed and told her she was being dramatic, but she didn’t sit down. She turned toward me and said, “You should never have had to become humble just to make your father comfortable.”
Nobody moved after that. My father started explaining that he was only trying to keep things light, but my aunt told him that changing the subject every time someone praised me wasn’t keeping things light. She said it was teaching everyone around him that acknowledging me was somehow disrespectful to him. My brother looked uncomfortable and finally admitted he’d noticed it too. My father stared at him and asked why he’d never said anything. My brother answered, “Because you always made it clear that if she was being praised, I was supposed to be the safer subject.”
My father went silent, and for once nobody rushed to fill the silence for him. My aunt finished her speech, and this time he didn’t interrupt. She told everyone how much work I’d put into making the birthday happen and how proud she was of me. People applauded, and I realized I wasn’t embarrassed by the attention anymore. My father eventually came over and quietly said he hadn’t realized he’d been doing it for so long. I told him that was the problem—not that he had interrupted me, but that he’d made me believe for years that being praised was something I needed to apologize for.
