A Change of Heart

by Carolyn Wang

Before I entered the university, I used to believe in everything my father said.

Ever since I was still a little girl, I liked to be with my father because he, instead of my mother, would spend time talking with me. And because my mother didn't pay much attention to what he said, he used to share with me all his thoughts and his working experiences. He was the deputy general manager of an electronics corporation. He loved me so much that he always talked to me about how to succeed, how to get along well with others, and how to accept different opinions from others. He thought openness was important, because it would help one succeed and be accepted easily by the world. Especially when one worked in a company, it was certainly necessary to be open-minded. We used to have one long conversation after another in the living room on numerous nights. We exchanged our living experiences and our personal suggestions with each other. When I told my opinions to my father about how to promote the relationship between the employees and the employers, his face lit up with a smile after listening to me, and he would say to me that he would take these opinions into consideration and express his gratitude to me. All these made me believe that my father was definitely an open-minded person.

But when I entered university, and for the first time brought my boyfriend home a few months later, what my father had said underwent a test.

My boyfriend was not that kind of dark and strong boys who had the power to make all parents in the world believe that they had the abilities to look after their daughters well. Besides, my boyfriend's long disarranged hair made my father detest him so much that my father vented all his anger on me afterwards. He said to me that he had been to Japan several times and seen many long-haired boys walking on the streets, and he didn't feel anything wrong with this phenomenon. But since we were here in Taiwan, and since our society and our neighborhood were still conservative, why did my boyfriend want to challenge it? Why did he want to have such a long, queer, horrible, and disarranged hair style? And since he was not an artist, how could he do anything his heart desires?

Teardrops began to creep down from my eyes all over my face when I was listening to my father's words. I knew he disliked my boyfriend since first sight. I knew that. But I was not crying for that. I was crying for the loss of the image I had of my father. I was crying because I suddenly discovered for all his proclaimed openness, he was not the one who would do exactly what he had said. It is easier to say to others that you are open-minded than to prove it. The only way to prove one's openness is to put him to test. But to our surprises, few people can pass the examination.

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