I was recently at a train station doing one of my favorite things. People watching. Train stations are great because you can blatantly listen to other people’s conversations, watch their ticks, learn their histories just through sheer proximity.
I watched a young girl grow frustrated with her mother until she finally said, “Mom! This semester’s not going to be like last semester.” I scrolled through imaginings of last semester and concluded by her Amstel Light shirt what the problem might have been.
I watched grandparents gush over their two year old granddaughter who only wanted to run around. They didn’t try to corral her. They just followed to protect her in case something happened. And the two year old knew it. She’d peek behind her every few steps to make sure they were still there and then shriek and run a few more steps.
And then…enter our hero, walking John Wayne’s walk, his eyes locked on the scrolling train times, and intent. My goodness, he was intent personified in creased dockers, a blue Oxford and a navy blue sports coat. Sharply dressed. Tight brown/gray hair. His walk brimming with intent. A prototypical man on a mission.
I’ve always admired people with focus. And although he was just dropping off his son obviously to go back to college this guy was parading through the sea of strangers like he was on a mission to save the world. A duffel slung over his shoulder, he didn’t veer for people. People veered from him.
The son, the cliched lesser son, slouched lazily behind in jeans and a t-shirt and hair in his eyes. He kept enough distance between he and his father so you’d still know they were together but still showing his disapproval by distance from his father.
The father bought the tickets, turned, and handed them to his son. He told him not to put the tickets in his back pocket. The two then waited, both looking up at the train board. Not so much with each other as next to each other. There’s a difference. And when the boy’s train’s track was announced, the kid looked at his Dad for the first time square in the face.
It seemed awkward because for the first time, the father failed to make eye contact with his son. He seemed busy all of a sudden. Checking his pockets and the duffel on the floor in front of him. It was the first time the father seemed unsure.
And then the father pulled folded bills out of his sports coat and handed them to his son. It was a set amount. He’d had it in his pocket waiting. I wondered why he’d waited until the last moment to hand it over.
And when the son stuffed the money into his pocket he looked away again. But then the father lifted his eyes to his son’s face.
“Have fun. Not too much fun,” the father said and smiled but the boy was already too cool and looking around the train station. He nodded but he did it as if he were nodding to some internal thought.
I started cringing because the father saw it too. I could see in his face the pain of a distant child. I wanted to tell him that I thought my parents were idiots too when I was 19. We come back. We grow up. We realize that everyone who came before us are not idiots. My parents didn’t change suddenly when I became 24. I did. Over time.
The boy stuck out his hand and the father took it, still searching his boy’s face. “Call Mom when you get in.” The kid nodded distantly again looking down as if something interested him on the tile floor.
And the boy started easing back. And the father raised his voice a little and yelled out something I couldn’t believe. With a mischievous glint he said, “Hey, remember if you meet someone special…don’t forget to put a thing on your thing.” And he pointed to the boy’s crotch.
A thing on your thing?
That startled the boy into eye contact again. For a moment. But it wasn’t a kind glance. It was a get this guy away from me patronizing glance. And the father knew it. The kid half smiled in an effort to be kind and turned his back and walked onto the escalator. Together, we watched only the back of the boy’s head as he leaned his entire right side on the rail that young people have of draping themselves over everything as if gravity were especially hard on them.
As the boy disappeared, the father took out his phone and began walking towards the exit. It took him a few steps to fully recover his hero walk. And he was gone in seconds.
Put a thing on your thing?
As parents it’s our job to curb the worst impulses of our children to protect them. Why not sexual instincts anymore? Why do we write off the sex drive as sacrosanct even though it’s as dangerous as lying or anger issues.
Pregnancy. VD. And how many times have you seen young people marrying the wrong person because they were fooled into believing that sex was love?
But instead of telling our children this, we tell them to put a thing on their thing as if that would protect them. Instead of acting like adults, too many parents seek to relate to their children by acting like children themselves. Is telling your child to put a thing on his thing just easier than teaching them not to use others. To love others fully?
September 8, 2009 at 4:09 am
"I wanted to tell him that I thought my parents were idiots too when I was 19. We come back. We grow up. We realize that everyone who came before us are not idiots. My parents didn't change suddenly when I became 24. I did. Over time."
You know, I've heard this from a lot of people about how they viewed their parents when they were younger. I never had that transformation. The things I know my parents are right about now, I knew they were right about them back then. The things I knew they were wrong about then, I still think they were wrong now.
Am I the only one who thinks this way?
September 8, 2009 at 4:27 am
To me it was more about realizing limits, both in their perspective on some things, but also my expectations on how I "should" have been raised. Like it wasn't until I was an adult that I realized how easy it is to make mistakes or just not have the time, and that it's hard to blame someone for their natural limitations or for the "secret" way they should have loved you.
September 8, 2009 at 5:21 am
That story is so sad….
September 8, 2009 at 5:36 am
David- me, too. I sometimes wonder if there might be something wrong with me, even though heaven knows I argued with my folks and did some dumb stuff, I always knew that if they weren't totally correct, it was most likely because they had bad information.
OTOH, with ranching, it does get beaten into your head that Choices Have Results… probably why my folks never had to have A Talk about sex or pregnancy.
(Making a connection between breeding and a calf is a very simple bit of reasoning that lends itself well to STD and torn-soul prevention!)
September 8, 2009 at 8:41 am
Yup. The father most likely had no connection with his kid anymore and desperately reached for the one common thing he thought would bond them; male sex drive. Either that or the son was gay and the father was trying to be "cool" with it. Either way, not something that should have been shouted in a crowded area, if at all.
September 8, 2009 at 10:15 am
Reminds me of the uncomfortable advice once given to me by an aunt of mine who worked in nursing:
"honey, if you're gonna love it up, glove it up."
September 8, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Ah, Matthew…you had me…
Weepy and wistful, thinking of those poignant goodbyes, as each of the first three made their way into the world of so-called independence. Sitting in the car with my husband, an hour after the oldest had been safely installed in her dorm room…wondering if she might come back out, if she needed anything else…
And then the clincher:
…a thing on your thing…
Tears of another sort…for a father devoid of the dignity of fatherhood, glibly tossing a vulgar one-liner with greater ease than he parted with his cash…
…to love others fully…
Such beauty in those words…words which can only be lived daily in the teaching, nurturing and instruction of children in the light of great faith and sacrifice. There's nothing sacrificial in that father's advice to his son…purely selfish, with no regard to the dignity of that "special someone" or his son…
Sad, sad, sad…
September 8, 2009 at 1:43 pm
This is why I come here. This weekend my 33 year old cousin came to visit for the Holiday. He's a nice, intelligent, humorous man. He walked around the mall in his Aeropostale t-shirt trying to pick up young women. Not because he's "looking for someone" but because "it's been a couple a months." He has two young sons and 2 ex-wives. This morning over breakfast, we attempt to counsel our young impressionable son in regards to this manner. He responds in teenage fashion. "Mom, don't you think I know he's an idiot?" Thank you Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
September 8, 2009 at 3:35 pm
I'm suddenly reminded of a conversation from on the ship.
A woman, about my age, was having a full-throated b*tchfest with her friend about half a foot from my head. After about five minutes, I made a suggestion to fix the problem she was expounding on, and she tried to jump down my throat that it was a private conversation.
I suggested that, if it were private, she might want to have it at a lower volume and greater distance.
September 8, 2009 at 3:38 pm
David- I felt and feel the same way you do. At times I feel as if I'm being arrogant, but when I pull every situation apart to try to label each action/inaction with "right" or "wrong"… I tend to fall into the right category for why I've always felt the way I do. When my own mother is trying to tell my 9 yr old daughter that she HAS to go to school to date boys because my 9 yr old questioned if she would make a good nun (she's honestly been thinking about being a nun since she was four)… then yeah, I keep my kids away from my parents because of my "right" versus "wrong" thoughts of how I was raised. (OBTW… I homeschool, so my mother telling my child she has to go to school wasn't right either).
I felt sorry for both the father and son in this image. The father epitomized what alot of relationships are based off of… money and sex. The kid didn't look the father in the eye until he was handed money, the father didn't look at the kid until he was telling him to put a thing on his thing. Hmmm…
I can only pray the boy wakes up and finds his own footing.
September 8, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Thank you DirtDartWife- I've been facing questions about how to deal with my Mom and our (newly) growing family. My Mom would probably get along well with your Mom… because of that, it's been tough for me to decide what kind of role my Mom will play in our children's lives. Thanks for sharing a bit of your story.
September 8, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Thanks for the story. It reminded me of the conversation I had with my dad the night before I left for college. I was kind of a nerd–and something of a recluse, too–but I was eager to begin my first big adventure away from home. Even then, though, my parents were my heroes, and I knew I'd miss them. My dad talked about his concerns and his hopes for me, and then–the part I remember the most–he gave me a big hug and said, "I wish I could go with you," and he actually broke down and cried. He didn't cry often (not that I saw, anyway), so that stayed with me.
I wish everyone could have dads like mine–and moms like mine, too. 😉
September 8, 2009 at 10:50 pm
(*singing*)
"And the cats in the cradle and the silver spoon…"
Don't worry I always sound better when I sing on the internet!
It seems that father/son moment was as sterile as the sexual act that man was promoting. What a shame – on both of them!
September 9, 2009 at 2:14 am
I told my second son before he left for college that he had a zipper problem, but if he kept his zipper up he wouldn't have a problem. He said he always carried a condom. I said that wasn't the question and wasn't the correct answer to the question. I also told him that no one always uses a condom. He protested that he was smarter. A year later the inevitable occurred. He had to learn the hard way. His older brother never had that problem. Some people cannot absorb wisdom from any experience but their own,