The Face

Monday. I wanted to change the shower filter badly. Call me a freak but shower filters are one of the most important part of my life. I could already see yellowish particles in the filter and I could already imagine the bacteria seeping into my skin while bathing.

So I pretended to be a plumber fixing stuffs in the toilet until my dad saw me having a hard time on it. He helped me unscrew the filter and thanks to his impressive strength, the filter almost broke. Only two little screws was left supporting it on the bathroom wall.

After almost breaking the filter, he started his sermon about how we should’ve called on the proper people who knew how to do the work. As hard-headed as I was, I was silently wishing he would just go back to his room and let me finish what I started.

There he saw me making face. (Too bad for me.) Expectedly, he scolded me and challenged me to fix the filter. Of course I felt bad, not about being scolded but by my disrespect to him in making a face behind his back. Just to appease him, I just said I would no longer insist fixing it. But deep inside I was still arguing that he was the one who broke it in the first place!

He marched back to his room just as I wanted but I didn’t dare touch the filter. I just tried to tolerate the image of the bacteria in my skin as I took a shower that night.

Until now I feel guilty of what I did. I can still see myself looking like a spoiled brat making faces just because I can’t do what I want. I won’t be able to realize how parents would feel about such ill-mannered gesture coming from their own child had my dad didn’t react the way he did.

I know it was not my persistence that got him mad. I must have hurt him. And that makes me feel even worse.