About once a week during the summer and in the weeks preceding and following summer, the frau and I join her nephew, thirty years my junior, and his stoner friends for a BBQ on the shores of nearby Lake Merritt. The main appeal of this ritual for me is that neither of us has to cook or to clean up following the evening meal (we do generally bring an assortment of meats for the grill).
I like the nephew, and although his aimless course through life strikes me as more appropriate to a twentysomething than to a thirtysomething, I’m aware that the range of desirable destinations has narrowed considerably since I was his age. It’s not as though I arrived at my current cushy, if lately uncertain, berth of set purpose, after all.
The conversation of his BBQ friends, most of whom appear to be within five years on one side or another of thirty, tends not to hold my interest for very long, devoted as it is to subjects to which I’m indifferent and expressed in language devoid of discernible imagination or wit. But this could be just me being an old fart, so I will as a rule hover nearby nursing a beer, keeping an eye on Ravi the Wonder Dog, and checking my watch.
Last night I had retired to chomp my hamburger at a nearby picnic table, there being no room at the inn. Over the course of a minute or so I became aware of a commotion at the main event. I tuned this out at first, because it was the bellowing of one of the established loudmouths, a gangsta wannabee given to bombastic posturing. At the third repetition of “I’ll make you my bitch, motherfucker” (not very far from the routine proclamations of this lout), I caught something in the tone that put me in mind of the timbre in a dog’s threat display when you realize that it’s no longer his “play growl,” so I ambled over to investigate.
The lout—maybe five-foot-eight, two hundred sixty pounds, built like a bull (or at least like a steer) and drunk enough to be belligerent, had decided that L’s nephew had “disrespected” the USAF hat, formerly the property of a cherished family friend, that he, the lout, was wearing, and wanted to settle things mano-a-drunko. My wife was already attempting to intervene, and the lout shoved her away with one hand, the other around the nephew’s throat. And what did I then do, my auditors and only friends? Hell, I stepped up to the plate: grabbed the guy’s arms from behind and briefly pinned them, whereupon he stooped, lifted me off my feet, and carried me piggyback for a few drunken steps, long enough for the nephew to put some distance between them. I wish I could have seen it: must have been a comic spectacle.
He freed himself from my grip; I rushed round to interpose myself between him and the target of his wrath:
“Don’t do it.”
“Get out of my way, old man!”
“Don’t do it.”
“This isn’t your fight!”
“He’s my nephew.” (OK, not strictly speaking, but according to common usage)
“I’ll put you on the fucking ground, old man!”
“Maybe. But then I guarantee you spend the next week in jail.”
“I don’t care! I’ve been in jail! Fuck you!”
I had the advantage of having consumed just a single can of beer at this point, so my R-cortex remained disengaged, and I felt no need to engage in competitive dick-swinging. “Stay away from him,” I said. “It doesn’t matter how pissed off you are, you don’t get to fuck with my family while I’m here. You’d do the same for your people.” This proposition engaged what remained of his reasoning ability, and distracted him from his immediate purpose. I was able to lead him away and talk him down. He grew maudlin about the former owner of the Air Force headgear. “What was his rank?” I asked. “I dunno, man. High. He rose high.” “You think he rose that high without self-discipline? Self control? How do you think he’d feel about you tonight?”
I’m pleased to report that this crude psychology did the trick. I persuaded the nephew to consent to a handshake (reluctantly, since he was sore about the lout having ripped a cherished old shirt to shreds in the course of the original assault) for the sake of notional and strictly temporary amity. It’s about the end of BBQ season, which nephew organizes and hosts. I suspect that the lout will fall off the mailing list next year.
cordially,
I like the nephew, and although his aimless course through life strikes me as more appropriate to a twentysomething than to a thirtysomething, I’m aware that the range of desirable destinations has narrowed considerably since I was his age. It’s not as though I arrived at my current cushy, if lately uncertain, berth of set purpose, after all.
The conversation of his BBQ friends, most of whom appear to be within five years on one side or another of thirty, tends not to hold my interest for very long, devoted as it is to subjects to which I’m indifferent and expressed in language devoid of discernible imagination or wit. But this could be just me being an old fart, so I will as a rule hover nearby nursing a beer, keeping an eye on Ravi the Wonder Dog, and checking my watch.
Last night I had retired to chomp my hamburger at a nearby picnic table, there being no room at the inn. Over the course of a minute or so I became aware of a commotion at the main event. I tuned this out at first, because it was the bellowing of one of the established loudmouths, a gangsta wannabee given to bombastic posturing. At the third repetition of “I’ll make you my bitch, motherfucker” (not very far from the routine proclamations of this lout), I caught something in the tone that put me in mind of the timbre in a dog’s threat display when you realize that it’s no longer his “play growl,” so I ambled over to investigate.
The lout—maybe five-foot-eight, two hundred sixty pounds, built like a bull (or at least like a steer) and drunk enough to be belligerent, had decided that L’s nephew had “disrespected” the USAF hat, formerly the property of a cherished family friend, that he, the lout, was wearing, and wanted to settle things mano-a-drunko. My wife was already attempting to intervene, and the lout shoved her away with one hand, the other around the nephew’s throat. And what did I then do, my auditors and only friends? Hell, I stepped up to the plate: grabbed the guy’s arms from behind and briefly pinned them, whereupon he stooped, lifted me off my feet, and carried me piggyback for a few drunken steps, long enough for the nephew to put some distance between them. I wish I could have seen it: must have been a comic spectacle.
He freed himself from my grip; I rushed round to interpose myself between him and the target of his wrath:
“Don’t do it.”
“Get out of my way, old man!”
“Don’t do it.”
“This isn’t your fight!”
“He’s my nephew.” (OK, not strictly speaking, but according to common usage)
“I’ll put you on the fucking ground, old man!”
“Maybe. But then I guarantee you spend the next week in jail.”
“I don’t care! I’ve been in jail! Fuck you!”
I had the advantage of having consumed just a single can of beer at this point, so my R-cortex remained disengaged, and I felt no need to engage in competitive dick-swinging. “Stay away from him,” I said. “It doesn’t matter how pissed off you are, you don’t get to fuck with my family while I’m here. You’d do the same for your people.” This proposition engaged what remained of his reasoning ability, and distracted him from his immediate purpose. I was able to lead him away and talk him down. He grew maudlin about the former owner of the Air Force headgear. “What was his rank?” I asked. “I dunno, man. High. He rose high.” “You think he rose that high without self-discipline? Self control? How do you think he’d feel about you tonight?”
I’m pleased to report that this crude psychology did the trick. I persuaded the nephew to consent to a handshake (reluctantly, since he was sore about the lout having ripped a cherished old shirt to shreds in the course of the original assault) for the sake of notional and strictly temporary amity. It’s about the end of BBQ season, which nephew organizes and hosts. I suspect that the lout will fall off the mailing list next year.
cordially,