Pervy old man or caring loving grandfather - you decide.

Just recently I had to take my father to a hospice appointment. I drove seven miles to his house to collect him to take him 4 miles to his appointment. As I may have said previously, he is extremely hard of hearing and communication is difficult, challenging, frustrating and stressful. This is partly because, for the past 30 years or so, his hearing has been in decline, making it necessary to speak as clearly as a BBC newsreader but at twice the volume and a third of the speed. Even so, he still tells me I'm not speaking clearly, I'm mumbling or I 'need to improve my diction'. Trust me, nobody else has issues understanding me. He gets irritated and nasty if he doesn't understand. to give you an idea, We started with the following conversation as we were leaving a fuel station having just filled my car. Me; Well that'll possibly last me a week. him. Did you fill it full with petrol? me; Its Diesel him; what? me it's DIESEL not petrol what IT TAKES DIESEL Zero? no DIESEL DIESEL D I E S E L Zero? Diesel fuel dad DIESEL - it's not petrol its DIESEL yes you said, but what about zero. not ZERO ... DIESEL it's DIESEL This car takes DIESEL D.I.E.S.E.L Oh DIESEL - right it's a DIESEL car I see. By this time we were at a set of lights which just turned red as I got there. He said 'You'll have to wait 127 seconds here now! I looked at him in WTF mode 'What?' 127 seconds - these lights have a 5 way sequence and it takes 127 seconds. I was somewhat taken aback. That's nothing short of weird. (although he has always had a thing about traffic lights). 'Right' I said not wishing to say anything further on the issue. There was a moment of silence, then he said 'Oh yes. I found a voucher in the house I was about to throw away.' I had a feeling this was going to be interesting, not least because he mentioned throwing something away, but there was something else niggling about it. 'Yes,' he said. I can't use it and Ant can't use it but I thought maybe your girls (his grandaughters) could use it.' I wasn't liking this conversation already. I smelled a rodent. After a short silence he continued... 'it's for feminine products.' OK, not liking this at all. While I am all for discussing this kind of thing when necessary with the right people, it's NEVER been anything I would EVER have discussed with him, nor wanted to discuss with him. He would have told me 'see your mother about that' had I ever asked. He just wasn't that type of dad. I told him 'Nah, throw it away, they like to sort themselves out'. 'Ah so they don't use them then?' he wanted an answer. I said 'I don't know dad, it's not my business any more.' I made it clear I didn't want to discuss this with him. At least I thought I made it clear. He then says 'I read somewhere that when females live together in the same house, this sort of thing happens at the same time. everything synchronises!' 'Oh' I said, not knowing what else to say and not comfortable with the whole conversation. 'Yes and now they're living in a flat with 3 other females, it will probably happen to them all at the same time!' Luckily at this point he wanted to give me directions to where we were going, even though I'd lived in the area all my life and taken him to the same appointment 4 times before. He likes to pretend he's the one who's showing me the way. I changed the subject. It was weird for sure and a little creepy. I don't like the way he refers to women as 'females'. He doesn't say 'the lady at the bank' as most people say or even 'the woman at the bank'. he says 'the female at the bank'. If you ask me it's full on creepy behaviour. I think his obsession with traffic lights are spectrum behavioour. Who does that? Timing traffic lights. He's always been the same - in about 1998 I'd just come back from my first trip to the USA on a Camp America programme. I had been there about 3 months and then had toured the USA on a Grayhound bus by myself. I was SO full of it. SO excited to tell everyone about it. I'd seen the Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, Lake Powell, The Blue Ridge Mountains, DISNEYLAND, so much. He picked me up from the airport and I was telling him about everything, so excited and proud I'd done it by myself and I was so excited to tell him about it. We got to a set of lights and I realised he wasn't listening to me. No, he was counting. He was COUNTING the number of seconds the traffice lights stayed on red. I stopped talking. '25, 26, 27, 28. Ridiculous! Ludicrous 28 bloody seconds those lights were red - and 22 seconds for the filter light. Bloody council couldn't run a booze-up in a brewery! Absolutely bloody ridiculous.' He said angrily. I didn't bother finishing what I was sasying, instead leaving it until I got home to tell my mum instead.He clearly wasn't in the slightet bit interested in anything other than himself and his weird little interests. I was speaking to someone recently who mentioned that constantly being on the recieving end of Narcissistic abuse can indeed affect people to the extent they change from a happy go lucky cheerful confident person into a mere shell. That happened to my mother.