Why not use your kid to make you look like a big shot?
I mentioned before about a smiling father as a “Warning–Will Robinson!” danger.
Smiling father taking me aside to see if the Popsicle guy asked kids to sit in his truck. Um, no. The guy was always drowning in kids whenever he stopped. And besides, the truck wasn’t air-conditioned. (Air-conditioned cars came later in the decade). Believe me, I’d have known if anything funky was afoot. OK, that was innocent.
Next, he ‘just learned’ about underground caves in the field behind our house. This was the first true ‘urban legend’ (minus the urban) of my town. You heard about the caves when you were in kindergarten, and every summer you and five other boys picked through every inch of weeds at least ten times. No caves. They didn’t exist. The only possible place was one corner near the road where some fool with a dumptruck unloaded piles of rocks and cracked concrete into a depression among the thorns. Just like the popsicle thing, he told me to make sure to tell him if I saw anything. That was a ‘What just happened’ moment.
Now we get weird. Two twin tomboy girls (much older) who lived one street up would occasionally chase/terrorize us little ones. Did I ever see them holding hands? WTF? Yea, daddy had to explain there were girls in our wonderful world who didn’t like boys. They liked other girls. You mean to play with, daddy? Oh no, they like them like a mommy loves a daddy. (Sidebar: can you guess how good he was at explaining the birds and the bees?). So, twin sisters were lesbians? Because they didn’t dress in crinoline and lace? No daddy, I never saw that.
Clincher: the scout leader for the level above Cub Scouts had a reputation as a booze hound (and a gut to match). Friends of mine who were still in scouts used to sing songs about his drinking and beer fondness. Daddy asks me did my friends ever say the guy drank? Cause you know, it’s bad to get drunk (like daddy’s father, the violent town drunk) and people like that must be watched. It was easy to see he had a personal jag against this guy and longed to use his councilman position to harass him. Nope, none of my friends ever mention it…….okay, son, please tell me if they do.
Now two and two equaled four. Use the kid as an information source to make daddy look good to his buddies. I was hurt–I was a child, not some stoolie selling secrets.
Postscript: There’s so many ironies in my life that I have a permanent aftertaste in the back of my throat. Occasionally some are lip-smacking sweet. The summer after eighth grade, he asks me if I heard anything about a case of Boone’s Farm wine found in the underbrush on the hill where we sledded. Nope, I see no/hear no evil. That wine belonged to me and a friend. We paid off the adult playground supervisor as his job ended. My quick thinking kept us from being busted by the cop the next week, but my friend hid a bottle where a blind chipmunk could find it. You should have seen the five cop cars–all hacking through thorns, convinced there were hundreds of unopened liquor bottles everywhere. No, hadn’t heard a thing, dad. Your son was taking his first wonderful step on the glittering road to teenage alcoholism and lost around 10 bucks in the process.
I am the one your warned me of, shithead.
You gotta learn the hard way, when you are the only child.