Preaching to the choir

At dinner tonight with my parents, a famous local criminal case came up in conversation.  My dad insisted that the case had resulted in a particular outcome, but I assured him he was incorrect.  He persisted in his assertion until my mom spoke up and said that no, my dad was wrong.  My dad responded by conceding he must be misremembering something because the expert said so.  He was referring to my mom as the expert.  And my mom was quite willing to accept the title of expert.

Umm.  Do these people know what I do for a living?  My mom is a very lovely, smart, well-informed woman and she was, in fact, correct, as evidenced by the fact that she was agreeing with me.  And I acknowledge that she has a long history of activism on criminal justice matters, most notably in opposition to the death penalty.  So she really does know her stuff and my dad is right to defer to her superior knowledge.  But I have to pull a little rank here; he should have deferred to my even greater knowledge long before Mom ever spoke up!  Because on matters pertaining to Kansas criminal law, I actually AM an expert! 

The fact that this irked me as much as it did suggests that I might have some unresolved issues from my childhood relating to my dad not taking my word for things on subjects that he should have trusted I knew about.