David McElroy

I vividly remember the facts of that day — in sharp, clear detail — but I don’t remember feeling anything. My lack of any emotion might be the most noteworthy thing about the day my mother tried to kill my father.

The day was just like any other Sunday afternoon for my family. We had gone to church and had dinner at home in our dining room. We lived on Holly Hill Drive in Atlanta. I was 5. My sisters were 3 and 1.

Sunday dinner was finished. My father went to lie down on the living room couch to read the Sunday paper. Mother was in the kitchen cleaning up the dishes. I was standing in the open entryway at the edge of the living room, just at the place where the room met the hall. The dining room was between the kitchen and the living room. The hall next to which I was standing was another way to the kitchen.

Without warning, my mother came running through the dining room from the kitchen. She had a knife raised in her hand as she ran. I cried out and my father looked up in time to reach out and grab her arm as she tried to stab him.

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For a political partisan, there are only two positions. His own position — parroting the party line of his group — is absolutely correct. Everybody else is lumped together. Anybody who dares to point out something which is outside of his group’s talking points must be shouted down.

Public discourse is a disgrace in this country, mostly because few people care about anything other than their side winning. Almost nobody is interested in another point of view, much less learning something which hadn’t occurred to him before — and which falls outside the bounds of his group’s talking points.

The faux controversy over an editorial delivered by close to 200 local TV stations owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group is a case in point. For instance, New York magazine had this headline: “News Anchors Reciting Sinclair Propaganda Is Even More Terrifying in Unison.” All the other news networks have had similar stories, mostly with headlines darkly reporting that TV anchors at those stations were “forced” to “recite Sinclair propaganda.”

What actually happened?

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I still remember the first time my father called me “fat.”

I was 9 years old. He and I were standing in the driveway of our home in Meridian, Miss. In just a couple of months, we would move yet again — to Anniston, Ala., this time.

He poked his finger into my little chest as we stood there. I don’t remember his exact words, but I remember being very confused at his anger. Nobody had ever said a word about my weight before. I seemed to be about the same proportions as all my friends, although I was slightly taller and was built bigger than they were. But my father angrily told me I had to start running — so I wouldn’t be fat.

I felt very ashamed of myself.

Not only did this mean I must look terribly ugly to everybody, but I had obviously disappointed my father. More than anything else, I wanted his approval — and I couldn’t ever seem to do enough. Or be enough.

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