Classic Post: A Moment of Reflection
Originally written 6-22-07
Just how immature do you think I am? I realize that I am rapidly closing in on the big three-o, and I still appreciate the same sophomoric humor like dick and poop jokes almost as much as I did when I was 14. I know that I personify a simple refusal to grow up, and I don’t care very much either.
But sometimes things happen that make me think that maybe I have taken things too far.
Earlier this week, I was at my parents’ house for a few days for work.
At 8:30 one morning, my mother called me on my cell phone as soon as she had gotten to work after her AM commute.
“Michael, you’ll never guess what I saw on my way to work this morning.”
“What!!!” I was truly expecting something spectacular for her to have called me right before her shift was to start. I couldn’t wait.
“On the road leading up to the on-ramp, I saw this beaver, and it was huge!!” She started to laugh with a giddy excitement that would imply that she couldn’t wait to tell me about this and that she’d been thinking about it during her whole 20 minute drive to work.
“And it was pooping right on the side of the road!!!” She was laughing hard as a cackling wall of sound came barreling through the phone.
I remained silent. I didn’t want to disappoint my mom.
“Oh that’s cool. How do you know it was a beaver?”
“It had a flat tail. I gotta go, I just thought you’d like to know that.”
What the hell? My mother, my saintly wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly mother saw an animal arbitrarily pooping on the side of the road and the first thing she thinks of is, ‘I need to tell Michael about this’.
I need therapy.
The very next morning my dad and I were working independently of each other in the shop. I was applying a finish to a door when he came in to the finishing room.
“Hey, I wantcha to come take a look at this.”
“Alright let me finish this coat,” I said. Usually when he approaches me like this, it’s because he wants to show me something that I fucked up.
Five minutes later I walked into the other room.
“What’s up?”
“C’mon,” he directed as he motioned me to walk outside. He led me around to the back of the building where the scrap wood is saved to be burned in the winter. A few logs were sticking out from under the tarp. There was what appeared to be feces on those logs.
“I bet this is raccoon shit.” His voice was beaming a little. “Look at this one. It has a bunch of seeds in it. I wonder what he ate to make him shit out seeds like that.”
I said nothing. I just looked at my dad curiously.
I am better at making my dad laugh than he is at making me laugh (this is true of everyone I hang around except Barry). This makes him try harder, and in turn he looks for things that he thinks are right up my alley. Apparently he thinks I can find humor in random piles of animal dung.
“You brought me out here to show me this?” I finally asked in an astute, exaggeratedly annoyed tone.
“Well I am sorry. I thought you’d appreciate that.”
I said nothing and we went back to work.
But it got me to thinking. If my parents think this way about me, what does everyone else think?
