Stoopid People

Today my grandson, who's 3-years-old, and I were at the park.

     As we were leaving the play area I noticed a gray van. In it were a father and his 16-year-old son. The elder was teaching the younger how to parallel park. I didn't think much about it until I noticed the man's other two young sons. One looked about 12 and the other about 14. They were each holding two six foot poles at each end of the limit line, in front of and in back of the van. Their father was using them as parking targets for his 16-year-old. I saw them more as potential fatalities.

     As my grandson and I walk closer I see the driver. He's your typical 16-year-old, but he has a very stressed look on his face. The father is in the passenger side and I can see he's giving the boy advice.

I thought about walking over and expressing my concern over using his kids as targets, because you read tragic stories in the newspaper all the time about kids getting run over. But those are usually accidents. I've never seen a father actively go out of his way to risk having a son or two run over. He must have them insured.

     I mean, the 16-year-old hasn't even mastered the art of switching his foot from the gas to the brake in an emergency without having to think about it yet.

     I once dated a girl (I'll call her Jackie, since that's her name), who's grandfather was too old to be driving. She told me that he would occasionally bump into cars that were parked on the side of the road. She told me this laughing.

     "He can't see," she explained when I didn't join her in her merriment..

     "Shouldn't someone take away his keys?" I asked her.

     Someone should have, but nobody did. I think one of the reasons--perhaps the main reason--was because nobody wanted to be the one who had to drive their grandfather and grandmother around for whatever errands or doctor's appointments they may have.
     I didn't push the issue. I had plans on getting lucky later that night.

     And then one day, her grandparents were coming home from church. As the grandfather pulled up to the driveway and stopped, the grandmother had to get out of the car to open the gate for her husband to drive in. Only, while she was opening the gate, the grandfather got confused about whether he should keep his foot on the brake, because the car suddenly lurched forward, and he ran into his wife--hard--knocking her forward a few feet. He must have had her insured.
     He broke his wife's hip, some of the bones in both of her legs, cracked a vertebrae or two, but instead of calling 911 for an ambulance, he called Jackie's father who spent the next 15 minutes trying to get his elderly--very elderly--father-in-law to call 911.

     "Why didn't you're dad just call 911 himself?" I asked her.

     He should have, but he didn't. One thing I learned about her family was that they sure did spend a lot of time not doing the things they should.

     The grandmother spent the next few weeks in the hospital. And then she spent the next few months in a body cast. Did I feel sorry for her?

     Not really. I mean, she, too, had a responsibility to tell her husband he shouldn't be driving, but she didn't. She didn't care that he was bumping into other people's cars. She--and everybody else--should have known that the old guy was a tragedy waiting to happen. I was just relieved that the geezer didn't kill some poor kid on his way to buy some comic books.

     My girlfriend's father was the one who ended up taking away the car keys from the grandfather, which wasn't really his responsibility. He was only the son-in-law. The rest of the family, as usual, ignoring their responsibility.

     But back to the present...

     As I walked past the car, I called out to the father, "Hey, are you sure that's safe?"

     "Hi!" he yelled back.

    "Are you sure that's safe?" I called out again.

     "I'm teaching my boy to drive," he said. It was like I was talking with my Dad. I wasn't sure whether he couldn't hear me, or he was just ignoring me.

     I pointed to the two of his boys standing on either side of a moving hunk of metal that could kill them.

     "Aren't you afraid your boys might get hurt?" I called out, louder and more forcefully this time.

     "No, no," the man said. "My boy's a good driver."

     The boy behind the wheel gave me a I-REALLY-Don't-Want-To-Be-Doing-This look.

     I stood for a few seconds more. Why the father would use his two young sons as parking targets, I couldn't understand. What I could understand even less was why he was teaching his son to parallel park in a van. I finally decided that the father could have very easily told me to mind my own business, so that's what I decided to do without being told.

     "Have a nice day, dipshit," I said, waving. My grandson waved too. The dipshit father waved back. The 16-year-old gave us a Don't Leave-Me-With-This-Dipshit! look.
     I sure hope I don't read a tragic story about two boys being run over by their brother in tomorrow's newspaper.

     Another father with a degree in stupidity.

_________________________

 

     I asked my buddy Maloney, "Do you get the newspaper delivered to your home?"
     "Yeah, why?" he answered.
     I think about my house. I get the newspaper delivered to my home every morning. Yeah, it's expensive, but it's worth it. At least, it was. You see my Dad likes to read the newspaper. Every morning he beats me to it and has the habit of placing it on the kitchen table in front of him as he's enjoying a nice cup of tea. Sometimes he doesn't even read it. It just sits there as he eats a five-star breakfast courtesy of my wife, served to him at his preferred temperature. Hot.
     He eats, watches the TV in the kitchen, and keeps one hand on the newspaper like it was an old girlfriend's thigh. He reminds me of a predator guarding its kill. Not eating it, but not letting the anyone else have it. There are perks to being the alpha.
     So I'll sit there, on my laptop, patiently waiting, waiting for him to get up and leave. Two cups of coffee later, and I'm still waiting for the newspaper. On the outside, my Dad is drinking his tea. On the inside, I think he's laughing at me. Meanwhile...
     My buddy, Maloney, has no idea how much his life is going to change, with a wife, kids, and now a mother-in-law to contend with.
     "No reason," I tell him.
     No reason at all.
 
 

Raising My Father

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