When you're older, you sometimes can't help but offer advice. I hope when I do, I don't seem superior doing it, but my motivation is just out of good will.
A friend, Tammy H. (not her real name, but she'll probably figure this out anyway) was complaining to me about how her girlfriends incessantly gossip about her. “My life, “ she said, “isn't that entertaining, but I guess that's all they have to talk about since they're married and bored.”
I advised her how I handle gossip. Since it's impossible to stop it, I just tell everyone I know this:
“Please, gossip about me. Make it memorable, in fact..MAKE IT UP! Because, since people gossip about me...I will gossip about THEM” I'm a great believer in the “glass houses” truism.
There now. That's an easy way to square it with the bank, huh?
Now a great story about “squaring it up.”
Sons have various relationships with their Dads. They are innumerable really. They can run the gamut from good, fostering and healthy relationships to abusive, destructive ones. Or there's the Dad who was never in the picture. So you get the point?
My relationship with my Dad always ran hot and cold as it depended on the circumstance of the day. There were times when I hated the Hitler and other times when I was amazed at what he knew. Also, he had this great asset of having both feet on the ground and this ability to read reality as it lay in front of him without coloring it.
But, stories of “Dear Ol' Dad” are boring, so here's one where I fucked him over at the age of seven.
Being a kid isn't easy. You are always struggling for more freedoms to be accommodated. Why not? Your selfish, single minded and greedy when little. But, there's that damned parent in your way either looking out for your best interests or just trying to quiet their day for their selfish convenience.
It was a Saturday, I was playing with the others down at the end of the street where all the neighborhood kids would meet. It was around noon when my Dad shouted down the street for me to come home to eat lunch, and I being far too involved in whatever game it was we were playing, I stalled for a good ten minutes before I started onto home.
When I finished lunch I was about halfway out the door, my Dad stopped and blurted out an ORDER that I was to stay in for the rest of the afternoon due to my dilly dallying when he called me to lunch earlier.
“What?” I thought to myself? Then I shot back at him “Why??! Why do I have to stay in the house? It's SATURDAY!!” As a kid, parental logic must always be questioned when it starts curbing your desires.
“Why? Why? Because I said so, that's why.” he finally said.
Without knowing it, my Dad was instilling in me a good sense of rebelliousness and hatred of authority at a young age. Truth be known, I overheard my Uncle more than once advise my Dad that he shouldn’t be so overbearing when it comes to raising his boys. So I was not acting out just from a young boy's impetuousness all the time.
I submitted to Dad's demand. What was I going to do at seven anyway? I moped around the house seething at the injustice. I then ended up in the cellar, trying to invent some fun thing to do when I came across some nails, 40d framing nails. They're a good 2.5 inches in length.
So I played around with these, dropping them from my fingers like a B-17 drops bombs, onto imaginary German installations...making those booming sounds to myself, when an idea hit me like a flash.
“Nails flatten tires...these nails could flatten asshole's car tires out in the driveway too..”
So I went upstairs and managed to go outside w/o alerting Dad to the fact I was no longer in house. I made it “look” like I was just a kid playing near his car. By the rear left tire, I placed the pointed end of one nail against his tire so that when he backed out into the street, the nail would drive itself in from the weight.
I then went back inside my house to fool around and a couple of hours later my Dad took off for Sears/Roebuck on Main St in Providence like he did every Saturday, to hang out in his childhood neighborhood.
With him gone, I flew out of the house and back to my friends at the end of the street to play games and whatnot. I came home around 5ish when Mom would be serving supper, but Dad wasn't home yet.
My Mom was wondering just where in the hell her husband was and about 40 minutes later Dad arrived with a great story.
“Maureen, you wouldn't believe the crap I had to put up with. I was on the Division street bridge when the car started going, flump, flump flump and I pulled over to find the right rear tire flat.”
“Did you ever get that spare fixed like I told you too?” My Mom correctly surmising that Dad didn't and hence his lateness.
“Well, that doesn't matter now...I managed to get it into that gas station on East Ave and they as they were fixing it, the mechanic called me in to show me what had flattened the tire...it was this HUGE nail!”'
I, eating this all up, blurted out, “Was it a shiny new one?” This was a slip up of my own, as I was reveling in the crime I had committed and just HAD to say something and be a part of this conversation. It's true, going back to the scene of the crime and taunting the detectives to catch you is a thrill.
I can still see my Dad's face as he looked at me to this very day. It was a look of dawning realization. His face said w/o any words...”How the hell did you know that it was a new nail?” That transformed into...”It was YOU who did this!” However, I sat there looking as bewildered as a seven year old kid could be about road hazards to tires and I think this may have saved my ass. My Dad was looking at me, with just barely enough circumstantial evidence, far too shy to convict me...and powerless to act. Powerless because what seven year old knows how to flatten a car tire..or can one?
He had to let it be.
Wonderful...
I've heard many ex-military types bitch that the Iraqi insurgency would NEVER fight the American forces one to one, on the desert plain in an open battle, that the insurgency always did it from shadows and short attacks. The Vietnam vets had the same complaints about the Viet Cong as well.
Well, think about it. What poor, weak and rag tag band with inferior weapons would take on a power that is the US Armed Forces on an equal stage? You'd be dead meat in six minutes. A young son is that too, powerless against the far reaching dominion of DAD.
I became an insurgent, a VC. And I won that battle that day.
This was my start, any son's start really, to where we reach that age where we can outwit our own Dads and become...equal and then share the power to where one day, we surpass them.
Sons should perform coup d'etats on their Dads. You better if you are to grow up.
