what exactly is " the fact" and "the fact It ever had been" mean in this context, please? Which was probably the only honest thing my dad said all night. After that he was quiet. He'd try to plaster up a smile now and then, but man, underneath it he was broody. And I was feeling kind of bad for him. Was he thinking about the good old days playing in a band? I tried picturing him in cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, with a guitar strapped across his shoulder, playing some old Willie Nelson song. He was right — it just wasn't him. But the fact that it ever had been made me feel even more like a stranger in a strange land. Then, when the night was over and the Bakers were piling out the front door, something else strange happened. the boy feel left out in this dress-up dinner between the two families, but why "this fact made me feel more like a stranger"?