Are You Drowning in a Sea of Misinformation?

Reader Contribution by Staff
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Sometime in my early thirties, during a visit to my parent’s home in western New York I made a life-changing observation. My mother wanted to go to a shopping mall 20 miles from my childhood home. My Dad and I were invited for some odd reason. When we arrived, Dad circled the parking lot a few times in an attempt to locate a parking space near the front door of JC Penny. It was a favor to my mother who hate long walks from the car to stores. This was in the days before the indoor mall!

Despite Dad’s best efforts, he couldn’t find a suitable parking spot. Mom became agitated as he search, , as usual, and when he did finally park the car, a little farther than she cared to walk, she blew up at him.

Sitting in the back seat, reliving my childhood nightmare, I was intensely uncomfortable. But what struck me the most was a feeling of having been duped.

Throughout most of my childhood, my mother had bad mouthed my father. She complained bitterly to us about his insensitivity, his less than stellar eating habits, and just about everything else he did or said. I heard so many complaints about him while I was growing up that I ended up intensely disliking my father.

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