Archives for category: Coming of Age

An Insecure Don Juan

October 18, 2012 //

The story below is entirely fictional. However, I cannot deny its plausibility at certain phases of life. Does everyone have these sorts of internal debates?

AN INSECURE DON JUAN

We said we would meet in the morning and walk around the lake. It was my suggestion, and she readily agreed, much to my surprise. I left the party feeling like I knew what I was doing. I was a player. I had obtained her name and phone number and e-mail address and an actual DATE.

“No way she’ll show up,” I told myself, upon waking up the next morning. “I must be delusional. It’s probably not even her real number or e-mail address. What was I thinking?”

I dragged myself out of bed feeling like a loser. A debate preoccupied my mind: “Do I go to the lake or do I skip it? How much humiliation can I endure? Well, that’s ridiculous. No one will know but me if she doesn’t show up. But that’s bad enough. I would know.”

“But what if she DOES show up, and I’m not there? What a jerk!”

I shaved and dressed and drove to the park. I arrived fifteen minutes early and waited. And waited. And waited. As the minutes passed, I tried to convince myself that I would prefer if she did NOT show up. “I didn’t even think she was interesting. And she’s definitely not my style. I’m not attracted in the least. I shouldn’t suggest getting together with just anyone I meet. What’s wrong with me? I don’t want to get involved; that would disrupt my entire life.”

I observed several other visitors enjoying the park. Some were walking dogs. There were couples holding hands and others that appeared aloof. One couple caught my attention because they appeared to be arguing. Looking at them from a distance rekindled my internal debate: “She’ll probably bore me to death. Or maybe I’ll bore her to death. Who wants a ‘relationship?’ They always end badly. Independence is what I want. I’d be happier alone. What was I thinking?”

I resolved to leave right away, stop for some coffee, and head home. It felt great to be clear again in my mind. Certainly, I would not put myself in this position again. I retrieved my key from my pocket and looked up. There she was, smiling, walking right towards me. My heart skipped with a burst of adrenaline.

“She looks great!” I enthused to myself, reliving my first impression from the previous evening. “This could really be something.” I jammed the key back into my pocket, and tried to look as though I had never harbored any doubts.

Categories Coming of Age, Modern Society

FIRST CAR

October 5, 2012 //

FIRST CAR

I grew up in a family with no interest in cars beyond basic transportation. We also lacked knowledge of their mechanics except for the location of the ignition, gas pedal and brake. My earliest family car memory is of a black and white Buick LeSabre. It represented, in the early 1960’s, the last of a long line of Buicks for my father. He embarked thereafter on a twenty year string of Oldsmobiles. One such car, a gray, hearse-like “Delmont 88,” may have been the only one ever sold.

The experience of driving cars was anti-climactic in our household compared to the trauma of purchasing them. My father spent seven days a week running his clothing store. Perhaps, the once-every-several-year car negotiation was his opportunity to avenge the occasional customer who asked for a discount. Or, since my father never played chess or tennis or any competitive sport, this was his chance to engage in combat. Whatever his motivation, he viewed the process like war, full of intricate strategy, momentum shifts and, ultimately, his victory.

In the present world of $40,000 vehicles, it is hard to imagine that a weeklong struggle could be waged over $75. But once, when I was six, that is exactly what happened. I recall returning to a dealership with my parents for the third or fourth evening in a week and cowering between cars while my father engaged in a shouting match with a salesman several feet away. I feared they would come to blows. I was mystified moments later when they went outside to share a cigarette break, while the car in question was prepared for us to drive home.

I never had a personal stake in these efforts until I was twenty-one. In honor of my college graduation, my parents were buying me my first car. The three of us traveled to a Toyota dealership where my mother and I seized upon a perky, red Corolla as the car for me. A toupee-topped salesman sidled over and pointed out that the sticker price was just under $7,000, but “he was sure he could do something for us.” We could hardly contain our enthusiasm. I sensed my father’s disapproval, however, as he was skilled in conveying his feelings wordlessly, with just a facial expression. His eyes shouted: “Don’t make this game easy for the insignificant and ignorant salesman.”

The salesman led us to seats in front of a small desk.

“Can I get you some coffee?” he asked.

“No,” said my father.

“A glass of water?” he asked

“Let’s get down to business,” said my father, indicating that he was through with the preliminaries.

The salesman took out a form and began to write numbers. He asked what additional features we might like to have installed on the car. My father did all of our talking, rejecting with a curt “no” each proposed add-on, such as: rust-proofing, extended warranty, moon roof, power windows, and the like.

“How about a pinstripe?” asked the salesman, finally, without much hope.

“Yes,” interjected my mother.

My father glared icily.

“What do we need that for?” he asked my mother.

“Because the car is for a young man, not an old man, and it needs a touch of youthfulness,” said my mother, determined.

I looked at my father with some apprehension, but he nodded agreeably enough, as though he realized this was not a skirmish worth fighting.

“Yes,” he said, to the salesman. “Add a pinstripe.”

I took a deep breath. Everything seemed to be proceeding smoothly now, without a hint of doubt. I began to picture myself behind the wheel. In accordance with my up-bringing, before this moment, owning a car had never been a major aspiration. Still, the freedom the red Corolla represented was growing in my mind. I sensed this was an important milestone in life, an affirmation of newfound adulthood.

The salesman finished scribbling and passed the paper with pricing across the desk to my father. Apparently, the fellow was lulled along with me into complacency, and he offered me an obsequious smile. My father studied the paper for a moment. and then shot out of his chair like the eruption of a long-dormant volcano.

“Let’s get out of here!” he said. I do not remember my mother’s reaction, but I felt my stomach flip violently. I began to sweat. Little did I suspect this was just an essential part of a larger campaign. The salesman bolted up just as fast and blurted something about “getting the manager.” We paused at the door as my father told him: “be quick about it.” He scurried off down a hallway. After a minute, during which we could see the salesman gesticulating to someone in an office, a round little man emerged with his chest thrust forward like a rooster. This situation was not going to be enjoyable.

With the benefit of decades of experience, my mother suggested that we wait outside. In spite of the maturity and autonomy I was just beginning to feel moments before, I agreed. I did not enjoy any part of the process that my father so clearly relished. However, we did watch intently through the window as an animated battle raged between my father and the manager, replete with hand gestures and foot stomps.

The salesman stood off to the side with a shell-shocked expression on his face. I doubtless missed some priceless dialogue, but I saw the discussion conclude happily when my father offered a handshake to the manager and lobbed a triumphant smile towards the salesman, my mother and me. The salesman smiled back tentatively and the manager’s chest now looked concave. In the end, the price was several hundred dollars below where it began, and my topsy-turvy stomach was calm. A Toyota Corolla was mine.

Categories Coming of Age, Parenting

Aunt Bessie

August 3, 2012 //

BUBBLE-WRAP

Aunt Bessie was not really my aunt. Around 1960, she’d married my widowed grandfather and, as such, put herself in an impossible position. Grandpop was the beloved father of three grown daughters. These daughters had deeply loved their mother and venerated their father with devotion and awe. As a result, at any family event, Aunt Bessie was dissected like a fly being flayed, one wing at a time, by a ten-year-old boy.
“She’s got those funny shoes on today,” noted one of the daughters.
“Her wig is off center,” observed another.
“I bet she’ll fill up the tea-cups half-way,” predicted the third.
“Maybe only a third of a cup today,” said the first one. “There’s a drought.”
All three laughed. As a result of repetition and, yes, more than a grain of truth, Aunt Bessie’s foibles became family lore. I recall one gathering at my grandfather’s house in honor of my eighth or ninth birthday. In our family, like many, it evolved that only females were responsible for buying gifts. This was unfortunate for me since Grandpop’s more generous nature wouldn’t prevail. Instead, the woman who famously recycled wrapping paper before “recycling” was even a word, held my fate in her hands.
I spied a misshapen package on a table in the corner of the room, wrapped in creased holiday paper that I knew was destined for me. By its shape, at least, I knew it wasn’t a tie. Instead, it was a wooden train engine, exactly the same as I’d received the year before, with the $1.49 price tag still attached.

*****

A decade later, after Grandpop had died, Aunt Bessie lived alone in Atlantic City. She may have been the last person to move to that town before casinos opened in the late 1970’s to complete its downward spiral.

My mother dutifully visited Aunt Bessie once or twice a year, which was infinitely more than her sisters did. On one occasion, when I was home from college during a winter vacation, I went along. We parked beside her windswept apartment building adjacent to the boardwalk. Angry, grey clouds spread drizzle around screaming seagulls. Seeing boarded-up storefronts, we worried whether our car would be there when we returned. It was hard to imagine that Atlantic City had once been renowned for sunlight and fun.

Once inside, we walked down a dimly lit, green-wallpapered corridor to Aunt Bessie’s door. We knocked several times before the noise of the television quieted inside, Aunt Bessie opened up. Barely five feet at her tallest, she appeared to have shrunk several inches from when I’d last seen her. She peered up at me through thick glasses.
“Oh, my, you’re so tall. Which one are you?” she asked.

*****

During the ride from Philadelphia, my mother and I speculated whether Aunt Bessie would have made a dessert or merely bought whatever was on sale for our visit. I guessed the former. My mother predicted the latter.
The apartment was tiny, but neat. My mother enthused about how clean it appeared. Aunt Bessie explained that a cleaner came once a week.
“She’s Puerto Rican, or something like that. I pay her $10. It should only be $5, but what can you do? People want so much.”
She directed us to a tiny dinette. On a paper plate was evidence of my mother’s wisdom – not even a name brand, but generic, store-brand cookies. My mother looked at me and nodded. Aunt Bessie offered us a choice of tea or freeze-dried Sanka. I chose tea, just to see how full the cup would be. Sure enough, she only filled it half-way.
We struggled through polite conversation for half an hour. I told Aunt Bessie about life at college and about my soccer team. She didn’t seem very interested but did perk up when I mentioned that the dorms were coed.

“You mean there are girls where you live?” she asked, surprised.

After my mother filled her in on other developments in the family, which Aunt Bessie tenuously followed, the conversation wound down. She didn’t ask any questions.
“Well,” said my mother, after an awkward silence. “We’ll head home now. We’ll visit again soon.”
“Wait a minute,” said Aunt Bessie, as we rose from our seats. She walked slowly into her bedroom and emerged a minute later with a small package of hastily scrunched bubble-wrap, held together by a piece of tape. She handed the package to me. My mother looked surprised. I felt something small but hard inside. I was glad it didn’t feel like a train engine. When I pulled the tape apart I held a silver dollar from 1892.
“That’s the year I was born,” said Aunt Bessie. “Remember that.”
Aunt Bessie died before I saw her again. But I still have the coin.

Categories Coming of Age, Reflections

Purple-Shaded Underwear

June 3, 2012 //

Regal plum and violet are not colors normally associated with mens’ underwear. But my father’s store was in a Puerto Rican neighborhood and, in the 1970’s, those were popular shades.

I hated working at Lou Sanders’ Mens’ Shop. I did anything I could to avoid it. Yet, thirty-five years later, I can still sense it like it was yesterday: the stale smell of cigarettes, the taste of cold coffee, the sight of piles of unsold merchandise. Did I neglect to mention sound and touch? Well, I also hated the Muzak playing in the background and the hard, uncomfortable feel of the stool that I perched on between customers.

I knew that the store was my family’s source of income. But I did not feel personally invested in it because, fortunately (I rationalized, and still do), my father loved everything about the store and ceded no responsibility. He did not really need my stilted and uninspired assistance. My presence was only required when my parents took a rare vacation or when it was particularly busy, right before Father’s Day and Christmas. My father chose to keep the store open seven days a week for over fifty years. It was his all-consuming passion.

Perhaps I was jealous of the store. My father loved his children and bragged about us to an embarrassing extent, but he was only truly comfortable at the store. It was his kingdom, his domain. He folded clothing with love. He shared cigarettes and coffee with salesmen with a degree of good cheer that I never witnessed anywhere else. He professed to enjoy the piped-in music that he would have turned off immediately in the car or at home.

I did learn some valuable insights from watching my father in action. He could sell an eighty-year-old German immigrant a short-sleeved white shirt for $3.95 and make the man feel like he had invested in a work of art. As soon as the man would leave, with a handshake and a hearty pat on the back, my father would whisper, with venom: “Old Nazi.”

My father could converse in fluent Spanish with a Puerto Rican customer as though they were best friends for life and then mutter, as soon as the man left: “Good for nothing.”

Is this duplicity? Or is this simply how one has to get along in the world? In my career, I certainly had to glad-hand a lot of clients and real estate agents and lawyers whom I really could not stand. Yet, with my father’s example, I knew how to proceed.

I have grudgingly come to accept that early experience, as miserable as it was, as a positive thing. I admit that I eventually applied much of what I witnessed at the store in one context or another. I do, however, draw a line: I will never be in favor of regal plum underwear on a man.

Tags retail, selling underwear

Categories Coming of Age

Babar

May 30, 2012 //

BABAR

No matter what my father may have said, I was not the most adorable five-year-old in the history of the world. I was contrarian at every opportunity. I rooted for the Cubs in a family of Phillie Fanatics. I cheered for Nixon in the debate while everyone else clapped for Kennedy. I preferred pomegranates to apples and grapefruits to oranges.
But none of the foregoing transgressions were as contrarian as my professed lack of interest in reading books — this in spite of having a mother, an uncle and three cousins employed as librarians.
Only one set of books redeemed me and allowed me acceptance in the intellectual society of my family, namely: Babar. I was hopelessly, completely, and inexplicably interested in the lives of Babar, Celeste, and all of their progeny. This obsession afforded every relative a surefire gift idea at birthday time, as though I were a middle-aged man interested in golf.
There were other books in my childhood. I recall being read “Ten Apples Up on Top.” I think it featured monkeys. I recall seeing “Where the Wild Things Are,” with its fantastic creatures. There was “Black Beauty,” though I had no interest in horses, whatsoever. All of these lesser mammals were tolerated only if I knew there was a heavy dose of elephant coming up afterwards.
Somewhere around the age of eight or nine, I suppose, my love of Babar receded and, with it, the intimacy of being read to in my mother’s lap or beside her on the sofa or bed. Those moments slip away unnoticed by the eight-year-old. But the parent notices, like when your five or six-year-old will no longer hold your hand in public. It may be a rite of passage for the child but it feels more like last rites for the parent.
When my daughter, Sarah, was old enough to be read to, my childhood love of Babar popped into my head. I hadn’t thought about it for twenty-five years. I immediately acquired an armful of books and looked forward to sharing them with Sarah. I was certain she would share my taste. I wondered which ones would be read over and over to the point of memorization.
It did not work out as I had envisioned. Sarah’s passion was for the Berenstain Bears – all seventy or ninety or three hundred of them! I found them to be tedious, moralizing, trite and predictable. I was disappointed. I was chagrined. Can you tell? I wondered how my own child could not share something that was so special to me. How could she not have been wired just like me?
Over time, I found a way to understand and accept the situation. Upon reflection, it made total sense. Just like her dear old dad, she’s a contrarian.

Categories Coming of Age, Parenting

An Encounter, Perhaps

May 15, 2012 //

Dear Readers:

I took a little break from humor this week. Here’s a story that is a little edgier. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

AN ENCOUNTER, PERHAPS

I find myself waiting for the C train to arrive in the dusky mid-town subway station. Thinking of the meeting I just attended and what a waste of time it was, my attention is arrested when I glance across the tracks and see a strikingly familiar woman. At least, she is as familiar as one can be after an interval of nearly thirty years. Is that R?

I met R back in the ‘80’s, when, fittingly enough, we sat next to each other on the train from Washington after the fall semester of law school. I was traveling home to Philadelphia, and she was continuing on to her home in New Jersey.

The woman across the way does not appear to notice me. She has the same posture R used to have. Her face is defined by prominent bone structure. She is not pretty, not delicate. One might describe her as a “handsome woman,” as one would have described R, thirty years earlier; R was attractive, but not beautiful. Her hair flowed in rivulets to her shoulders in homage to her Hispanic roots. This woman’s hair has specks of gray.

R was a serious law student. She loved the classes at Georgetown. She thrived in the jousting of mock trial, the challenges of verbal sparring, the parsing of dry texts. My approach to law school at George Washington was less enthusiastic. I counted the days until it was over. I was amused by my career-chasing classmates, but not charmed by them. I found the readings tedious and largely meaningless.

An unclear loudspeaker announces a ten-minute delay.

I used to speak to R about once a year, around the time of our late-fall birthdays. One of us remembered to call over a period of ten or fifteen years. It was a ritual that gradually faded away and then disappeared about ten years ago. I suppose it is hard to maintain a long-term friendship without ever seeing the other person. She would ask: “How are the kids?” betraying her inability to remember if there are two or three and whether they are boys or girls. I’d respond by asking after her son. I could never commit to memory if his name is Linus or Lionel. Each year I was afraid to guess wrong. And is her husband Warren or Norman? It’s one of those sorts of names.

Should I wave? No, she won’t notice. What if she does notice and thinks I’m crazy? It probably isn’t R, after all. Should I call out? It is so noisy down here, so dingy. Such a small chance it is R. And if, by some miracle, it really is R, then what will we do from opposite sides of the tracks? Will we engage in a public shout out?

“How’s it going?”

“What?”

“Why are you here?”

“Had an appointment! And you?”

“What did you say?”

“I can’t quite hear you?”

We had a few dates after our train ride. We both enjoyed the same types of movies and agreed on politics. We had similar families with two living, happily married parents and several siblings. We would try, mostly in vain, to understand each other’s viewpoints on law school. “How can you enjoy it so much?” I would ask. “How can you not?” she would reply. I appreciated R’s looks but was not physically attracted to her. I think she found me similarly respectable, but certainly not the man of her dreams. Because it was so comfortable, it was like having another sister, but we did not share the deep, familial understanding one might expect of a true sibling.

The woman looks up and scans my side of the tracks. She looks in my direction. Does she seem to pause when she sees me? Is she pondering if she knows me? She looks down again, shifting her weight from one side to the other. She looks up again and might be looking at me. Is she wondering? She certainly looks like R, or how I would imagine R looks, after so many years.

I raise my arm a little and make a sort of waving motion. But it isn’t really a wave. I am too inhibited to get the woman to notice me. I don’t know why. I’ve always been this way, afraid to make a public display. If she thinks it is me, she will acknowledge my gesture, perhaps. She does not appear to notice.

R and I went out to the movies one night, perhaps two months into our sporadic, tentative relationship. It was hard to find an evening when she did not feel the need to read law books or attend a study group. I occupied my evenings attending hockey games or watching sports on television.

The movie was “Fitzcarraldo,” the strange story of a man who built an opera house in the Amazonian jungle. But that is not the reason I remember the evening. The reason is that we went back to my apartment afterwards and made love four times. Yes, it seems hard to believe. We came back for a cup of coffee and ended up in a night of copulation. Or should I just call it fucking? Whatever it was, it was completely unexpected.

When we awoke the next morning, I did not know what to say. Two friends, previously chaste and totally sober, had engaged in an every-two-hours, night-long expression of physical passion. Or was it a catharsis? Or was it a banishment of loneliness? Or was it a rejection of frustration? Or was it a cry of hope? What the hell had happened?

A couple of transit police walk along the platform. They appear to be looking for someone. I always take comfort in their presence. You never know who is around you in the New York City subway system. Here it is, even when I think I might know someone, I’m not sure. I am doubtful. I am hesitant.

Were we now boyfriend and girlfriend, I wondered? R seemed more mature than I. She did not act like anything extraordinary had occurred. She did smile a little when I noted that four times was a personal record. In fact, I admitted to myself, though not to her, that once would have tied my personal record up to that point.

I offered to ride with her on the bus back to her apartment. R demurred but then said: “Okay, if you want.” Were we to hold hands at the bus stop? She didn’t seem inclined. What were we to talk about? The nature of our friendship had changed. It was awkward. When we sat down in the bus, I stared out the window. I stole a glance back at R and tried to determine if I now found her beautiful. No. She still struck me as a decent-looking girl, with distinctive features. Nice hair, though a little unkempt (not surprising, considering the night). Good skin. But there was no pounding in my heart. No adrenaline rush. No sweaty palms. We parted politely, with me offering, and R accepting, a quick peck on the cheek.

A few people pause in front of the woman across the way, blocking my view. She moves a few steps down the platform where I can see her again. A large man in a grey sweatshirt approaches and appears to speak to her. She shakes her head vigorously. He spits near her feet and walks away, speaking to her unpleasantly back over his shoulder. She glares after him but does not appear to be particularly upset. She walks a few steps farther into the clear. Does she want me to see her? Does she just want space? Does she want to be away from the other people on the platform?

“This is silly,” I tell myself. “Just call her name and see if she answers.”

I can’t do it. Although I am in one of the most impersonal environments in the world, a New York City subway station, I am unable to call attention to myself. I look around and tell myself that I will never see any of these people again. I sigh. I’m just not good at certain things, even while I tell my children to try to rise above inhibitions, to speak up when they have a chance. Easier said than done.

I called R on the phone a few times after our “night.” However, we did not see each other again in Washington. Several years later, we were both practicing law in New Jersey. R had taken a job helping poor clients in Newark with their immigration needs. I was at a firm in Summit that represented banks. Once again, she was energized and excited by her profession. I was suffering with the minutiae of financial regulations. A mutual friend, who did not know we were already acquainted, introduced us at a Bar Association picnic.

Is that a rat scurrying around the tracks? I’ve seen them before. Certainly could be. Take a deep breath. It’s not a big deal, just part of life in the city. Did anyone else notice? The woman who resembles R seems to be staring straight ahead at something off to my side. It can’t be R. But she sure looks like her. I’ll move a little and see if her eyes follow me. Nope. She looks down at her side. She flicks a hair off her sleeve. That reminds me of R again. I’ve seen that movement before. Of course, everybody does that. It doesn’t mean it’s R just because she notices a hair on her sleeve and removes it. Don’t be silly.

We talked at the picnic and learned about each of our young, professional lives. I was not surprised to learn that R had helped to organize the gathering, whereas I was urged forcefully by my boss to attend. We were not romantically involved with anyone at the time, and we resumed our comfortable, occasional, dinner-and-a-movie friendship. Once, on a Saturday, we drove to see the cherry trees in the park in Newark and played tennis together. She was terrible. It was so bad, it was good. We laughed hard and knew the memory would remain with us forever. It seemed to me that we could talk about anything except the nature of our “relationship,” or the events of our “night.” I was deeply curious to know what R thought, but I could never find a way to bring it up; R certainly did not. The mystery remained in my mind over the years.

The police pass by again, looking furtively. Are they looking for anyone in particular? Their thick, leather jackets denote toughness. Their scowls are designed to intimidate. One is black and one is white, but they strike me as completely the same. They clearly have a mission; I don’t know what it is, but they seem intent on finding someone.

R and I signed up for a handyman’s course together at a local adult school. It was a good way to cement a weekly dinner routine while, at the same time, theoretically learning something new. We both learned, however, that our aptitude for wiring lamps was equal to R’s aptitude for tennis. Once in a while, we engaged in activity that would these days make us “friends with benefits.” But that ended before the ten-week course was over when R began to date a judge. I was a sympathetic listener. My complete lack of jealousy confirmed for me that our friendship was pure, albeit occasionally physical.

The platform around the woman is becoming crowded as the train approaches. People jostle for position. It is now or never for me to speak out, to see if she is my old friend. I almost shout once, but swallow the words in embarrassment. An announcement over the loudspeaker would have drowned them out, in any event. The woman I think might be R moves her sleeve to look at her watch. She then looks up and seems to lock her attention on me. Or is it on the younger man next to me? She opens her eyes wider, it seems to me, from my vantage point thirty feet away, across a dim set of tracks, in uneven, fluorescent lighting.

In one of our last dinners, before she became engaged to Norman/Warren, the judge, we agreed that if we were both single when we were thirty-five, we would marry each other. It was a secure agreement, offering a sort of insurance against the prospect of a life spent alone. We were not the first people to make such a pact, but we might have been among the most sincere.

In tacit acknowledgement of our past activities, I was not invited to R’s wedding. I understood. Our only contact after that was through our nearly annual telephone calls. R’s marriage turned out to be strong. As the years went by, she would tell me about their great vacations and how much she enjoyed her husband’s family. I would tell her about my happy life, my wife and children. We each found niches in our careers. She approached the law willingly, me reluctantly, but we both were successful.

I resolve, finally, to make myself known to the woman across the tracks who resembles my friend, no matter what, when a man dashes down the steps behind her. He is pursued frantically by the two policemen who had previously been on my side of the tracks. He appears like Rocky in the movies, a dark-haired man in a grey sweat suit and high-top sneakers. I realize he is the same man who had earlier confronted the woman. The police shout at him to stop. People turn towards the commotion, though it is not particularly unusual in New York City. The rumble of the train approaching the station builds to a crescendo. I scream, finally, in horror, as the man, with a maniacal look on his face, grabs the woman I think might be R, and shoves her in front of the oncoming train.

Categories Coming of Age

First entry vignette

April 29, 2012 //

Sam is a college student who only ate foods from the paler end of the color spectrum for the first nineteen years of his life. These included bread, pasta, sugar, rice and milk. For protein, he might have added chicken. The greens, reds, oranges and browns were not consumed. As his parents, we were initially alarmed and willing to fight to get a vegetable or fruit onto his plate. However, he was a third child, and we were relatively older parents and, as far as battles worth fighting go, our stamina did not match his stubbornness.

We sent him off to college happy that his diet was possibly the worst of his defects. We hoped he might learn to diversify his diet just a little bit before he graduated. Little did we imagine that he would return home after just one semester a changed person. He blew out our food budget by requesting salmon and swordfish. He asked for sushi at lunch. For breakfast, he turned down chocolate chip pancakes, much to my dismay, in favor of crepes.

When we suggested dinner at a standard chain restaurant one evening, he pled for Indian buffet and then regaled us at length with the relative merits of tandoori chicken versus curried lamb. When he craved take-out from the Turkish place in town, we knew something had happened, but what? He certainly could not be pregnant.

It turns out that Sam has a girfriend named Bonnie. Bonnie is
Korean. As far as she knows, Sam has always been an open-minded gourmand and he told us he would not mind if we did not emphasize his true history too much when we met her. She brought kimchi and sea-weed with her as a gift and he pled with his eyes, figuratively, at least, for us to shut up and chow down. We did, with mixed results. Now my wife sometimes chooses to snack on sea-weed. I still stick with the potato chips.

Anyway, Sam got his comeuppance at New Years. He was invited to Bonnie’s house for a family dinner and she asked him what he would like her mother to make. Instead of naming a favorite he said that Bonnie’s mom could make something “interesting.” Hmmm… that may have been a mistake. She chose to make a highly seasoned octopus. Our son dutifully ate, so besot with affection was he. Then he came home after midnight and consumed the biggest bowl of Cheerios I have ever seen.

The traditional assumption is that the way to a man’s hearrt is through his stomach. In Sam’s case, however, the way to his stomach may be through his heart.

Tags dating, octopus eating

Categories Coming of Age, Parenting