Irreverance and Derelection

I learned something very important shortly after my  40^th birthday – nearly 6 years ago now.

With only the occasional exception of my Lovely Wife, Nobody’s looking at Me.

I dunno if It's a universal truth for the condition of being male, over 40, in Western Civilization... Or it's Just Me.

This is not a complaint, by any means. It was nearly as freeing 5ish years ago as it was when I made the same discovery of my relative invisibility – at least to my class mates - in high school. My audience will note that one of the most commonly wished-for superpowers is, indeed, invisibility… with Telepathy a close second.

And here it’s innate for me. But it’s problematical. Back after I left high school, it suddenly evaporated completely on me; probably as it was bestowed upon me by my peer group… and I changed peer groups. Now… Now I find it breeds complacency to the point of dereliction.

Best not to ask me about the Telepathy. I’m a Dad. Their mother is even better. Drives our boys insane.

We used to accuse Dad of being… well, at least, dressing… like a Derelict.

Perhaps that seems harsh. Dad liked – when not playing School Principal – to dress strictly for comfort. This worked out to green cotton pants (loose). Pants. Calling them chinos would be excessively kind, and probably historically inaccurate. A sweatshirt of an indiscriminate colour over a plain white tee, his black and grey wool hunting coat, mangled black cowboy hat, and a pair of Greb Kodiaks, unlaced… Insoles hanging out.

Add a shock of Mad Trapper White hair sticking out and a grizzled full beard, and you get the picture.

And Yet.

And yet from 8 to 5 Monday through Friday until 1997 he cut a western-professional impression in a suit and well-shone (but well worn) cowboy boots. He’d come home and hang up the image with the suit, and slip into irreverence. 

Yep, Irreverence. Dad was accused of that once by a fellow he’d met somewhere west of the sticks on some hunting trip or other with his oldest friend from the Old Country. He loved telling that story. 

I think he wore irreverence on his sleeve like a badge of honour – unknowingly at first – but after he was classified that day… with pleasure and a certain aplomb. Hence his out-of-school mode of dress; it was, in hindsight, a complete shucking of civilization for comfort and convenience. He dressed like a derelict because out of school, he had nothing to prove to anyone, and no one to impress, and took very little seriously.

Perhaps subconsciously I have - imperfectly - taken that page from the book of Dad. While at work these days, post forty, in my business-casual corporate culture, I dress like a man in dire need of a monkey and a yellow hat.

So? I like chinos.

It occurs to me that I must more completely adopt the page from the book of Dad, however. Not only do I not Clean Up as highly (ie – no suits, no ties) – but I also may take a few too many things slightly too seriously when not at work… and, thus, my usual decayed manner of dress-off-duty at least all matches, and is indicative of a particular style.

My Lovely wife will tell you, that style – and my favourite summer uniform – the Black shirt with the outlined orange dragon, surmounted from the bottom up in yellow and red flames, with matching flaming shorts – is the stuff nightmares, and she prefers not to be seen with me in public when I’m wearing that.

Perhaps I should rethink this, since nobody’s looking at me anyway. Completely adopt the page, at least the not-at-work part, and descend into irreverence. It strikes me that my Dad was a lot more fun to be around than maybe I am.

Less Harry Callaghan. More Heathcliff Huxtable. 

Couple years ago I'd shop in pjays. Why did I stop that? Nobody's looking at me. Seriously. Who cares?

Maybe I’ve already (finally) started.

Ask Youngest Kid about trolls some time. I need a new Summer Shirt.

 

Kitchens

A couple weekends back was a birthday weekend. My youngest turned eight, and my Sister in law turned… more than eight. We tend to clump them together; it turns out that it’s less likely we’ll gather on a standard grownup birthday anymore; the milestone ones, certainly, but the rest, no. Except, of course, my Lovely Wife - she has a Holiday Birthday; there’s always a party.

Historically, during things like this, I gravitate toward the kitchen.

I’ve always felt most comfortable in a kitchen. Doesn’t really matter whose it is, either. It probably started in the late 70s after we moved to the Sticks.

Interestingly, the Kitchen as the social gathering point was not the case in my ancestral home, growing up. No; our kitchen table was most commonly buried a foot deep in Papers, boxes, knitting, Kitchen gadgets, Placemats, flotsam, and junk – and if you could sit two people on the outside corner to eat – at a table for six – you were pretty lucky.

It was also in the same corner as the Dogs’ dishes, and subsequently where the dogs commonly slept… up until Mom had enough in the mid 80s and they became Outside Dogs.

Relax. We built them a most excellent accommodation, lined with straw, big enough for 2 large… and still let them in when it got cold. But I digress.

And stacks upon stacks of frikkin newsprint. This was before both Internet-based news sources, and a decent recycling program, so paper was kind of a problem. Dad liked to hang on to some at least; made great kindling.

It got cleared off every now and again; a couple times a year for holiday meals; otherwise for other major productions. Like bottling.

We kept bottles – beer, mostly, but liquor, too - like we kept newsprint – the difference was the bottles were worth something (well… there were a few years where we didn’t have a depot in the Sticks… that was interesting) and we actually had a use for them.

One of the Harbingers of the Christmas season in the Sticks was Mom would pull out a number of bottles – a large number - and start washing them.

The Liquor bottles she would set aside; they were for Kahlúa. The Stubby beer bottles, though – those were for RootBeer.

A single batch of Rootbeer would produce 5 dozen bottles. That made sixteen rootbeers for each of the four kids – but that never worked out quite right. We looked forward to the rootbeer every year, but, if memory serves, it was very often flat, and really not all that tasty… or, occasionally, Rootbeer like. But it was one of the absolute unshakable joys of the approach of Christmas when I was a kid. Eventually, I took over the production of it. I think I was 16.

I love Rootbeer. But I haven’t made it since. 

I mentioned Mom set aside liquor bottles for Kahlúa.  Evidently, Kahlúa is made with Rum – But I remember Mom starting with an awful lot of Rye. It would end up several gallons of sweet coffee liqueur, tho – most of which was slated to be consumed at the nigh-Infamous Black Russians for the Road Party.
 
Aaaaand once again at the risk of mortally offending the BCTF, I’ll leave that one for another time. Suffice to say that those events also were iconic childhood harbingers of the Christmas season for me... and was the annual event that rooted me in my love for Kitchens; during it, I effectively owned the kitchen at our house from the time I was 13. 

It was also usually the only opportunity we got to pig out on Bugles.

Other times of year the empties went toward Dad’s efforts at home brewed beer. He had a large number of specialized one-litre stoppered bottles, and a lot of really good brewing equipment. It didn’t seem to help much. I don’t know why. 

I thought recently that it might be fun to try brewing my own beer. Unfortunately I thought this out loud… and my Lovely Wife kindly suggested that it was a fairly unhealthy decision.

Evidently she heard about Dad’s beer.