New Dealer Coming In

   As I was leaving work last Friday, I got a text message that my cousin Jim had passed away. We all knew it was coming–he had stage IV lung cancer from a lifetime of smoking unfiltered cigarettes–but that the end came as fast as it did was still a shock.

   Facebook messaging got a real workout that night as cousins far and wide remembered him fondly, especially for his jokes. He had a joke for every situation and if he didn’t, he told one from his vast repertoire anyway. Every one of his jokes began the same way, “That’s just like...” even if it was nothing remotely like what you were just talking about.

   But there was something else in those messages that led me to an epiphany about my relatives.

   Any occasion for this family can involve a poker game. Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays, Christenings, Communions, Confirmations, even weddings and wakes, it doesn’t matter, somehow a poker game will break out as long as they find a flat surface and a few empty chairs. It’s just a friendly game, nickel and dime mostly, with plenty of good-natured conversation mixed in.

   That’s the way it is now. When my Dad was alive, poker, even penny-ante, was serious stuff. Before dessert was served, he’d start getting antsy. If people weren’t eating fast enough he’d start clearing the table himself. Those who weren’t playing cards were summarily banished to other rooms to finish their pumpkin pie and coffee. 

   Before each hand he’d survey the table and yell, “Who’s light?” That had nothing to do with the weight of the players after the sumptuous meal they’d just enjoyed. It meant that the pot was a nickel short and the dealing wouldn’t start until everyone had fed the kitty. When his mind went bad and he had no clue who was at the table, he still knew instantly if the pot was short.

   Despite the old man’s autocratic rule, there was always a demand for the seven seats available. They usually went to the older generation first, then down to my older cousins, and eventually to me and beyond. Many of us kids and now our grandchildren have been taught the finer points of five-card stud and seven-card merry widow at the hands of their elders while having their piggy banks and pockets quickly drained at the same time.

   So how does all this talk of playing with the Devil’s pasteboards lead to an epiphany? In addition to Jim’s jokes, mention was made of his legendary prowess at the poker table. That’s when it hit me.

   It’s often said that a person near death hears the flapping of angels’ wings. Not so in my family. What they hear is the shuffling of cards as room for one more is made at the celestial table. Jesus compared heaven to an eternal banquet. To my ancestors it’s an on-going game of no-peek baseball in a quiet corner of heaven’s basement.

   Farewell, Jim, and don’t forget to feed that kitty.

   

Lessons Learned

   It’s been a year since Jim married Bridget. In a very short time, my son who I thought would never make the transition from bachelor to husband, found a nice girl and became a step-father to her two children, Tyler and Samantha. Tyler, age twelve, has a mind like a computer. He plans everything he says and does with NASA-like precision. This quality may make him seem like a nerd at his tender age but it will take him far when he decides to marry.

   Shortly after their wedding, Jim and Bridget were invited to a party close to where they live. It was adults only and my daughter who lives a few miles away offered to take the kids for the night. As they were getting into the car, Jim observed, “You know, if we didn’t have to drop off the kids, we could just walk to the party.” To any man, this is a harmless logistical statement of fact. If he’d said it to another man, the response would be, “Duh.” What Jim didn’t realize was that he’d just verbally left solid ground and stepped onto a metaphorical straw mat covering a hole filled with sharpened punji sticks.  

   Bridget exploded. “Maybe we should just get rid of the kids,” she screamed.

   They never went to the party.

   My son, who’d lived alone or with male roommates for most of the prior ten years, and could fearlessly say anything he wanted without thought of contradiction or retribution, was unschooled in the nuances of talking to women—especially one he was married to. The lessons began that night.

   It’s been my personal observation and that of my married friends, when our wives aren’t around, that something changes when a woman marries. That sweet fun-loving girl becomes a ruthless, calculating, cold-hearted linguistic sentinel on the lookout for something sinister in anything her husband might have the temerity to utter. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism, but a woman parses everything her man says seeking any subtlety in tone or phrase that might be a knock against her.

   For example, he says, “You look nice today.”

   Instantly she thinks, “Is he saying I looked bad yesterday?” Then she lets him have it.

   He learns to drop any qualifying words that might be taken the wrong way. “Safety First” becomes the rule for saying anything to her.

   I learned a different lesson early on. The wife asked one day if I would like steak or chicken for supper. When I responded in favor of steak, she asked why I didn’t like her chicken. I tried to explain that there was nothing wrong with her chicken, I just preferred steak on that particular night. She countered by telling me she’d already made chicken anyway. Things escalated when I asked her why she’d given me a choice when she’d made my decision for me. After a brief discussion that brought the neighbors to their windows, we ate our chicken in icy stillness. That was the night I learned to embrace the silent treatment.

   Since my son and I work together, we discuss these issues a lot. I’ve explained to him that he must think before he speaks. He must look for anything in his upcoming utterance that could be used against him in the court of marital bliss where he stands accused and she is judge, jury, and executioner. When in doubt, I say, grunts and monosyllables are as safe as can be. However, there are times when questions must be answered and he must be cautious to a fault to avoid saying something that might be turned around to bite him in the ass.

    That being said, there is a question that every married man should never, ever, answer. No, it’s not the “do I look fat in this?” query. My thinking is that if she thinks she looks fat in something, she probably does. “Uh-uh” is always a safe bet here. The unanswerable question is, “If I died, would you remarry?” These six simple words are a trap. There is no correct answer.

    If you answer in the negative, she’ll get all upset and claim you hated being married to her. If you say you would get married again, she’ll ask, “Who is she?”

   I took a solemn oath from my father that he took from his father and so on back into the antiquity of husbanddom. I swore that I would avoid that question at all costs. I have passed the oath on to my son but it will probably end with him. Tyler, I’m sure, is already working on the answer. 

The Ugly Fork

    I was making room in the basement for some work to be done and came across several boxes long forgotten in a remote abscess under the stairs by the furnace. There was no time to check their contents. The mission was to get them out of the way as quickly as possible since the workers were coming early the next morning. As I took one box from the shadowy corner, the top flipped open to reveal a mismatched collection of flatware that I hadn’t thought about in years. Right on top was The Ugly Fork. As I stopped my labors momentarily to behold this family relic, a flood of mealtime memories came back.
   We didn’t have much when we started out, my wife and I. Except for a brand new bedroom set purchased from our wedding cash and checks, most of our furniture was scrounged from garage sales and my college dorm room. I got the stuff even my roommate didn’t want, including a pole lamp and a beer-stained swivel chair. Our TV was a 21-inch black and white Admiral with a tilted picture tube that we bought for twenty-five bucks from a friend of a friend. Meals were served on a hodge-podge of plates, glasses, and the aforesaid flatware.
   Shortly after we bought our first house, the local Mobil station at 159th and Pulaski began offering free flatware with a fill-up. To fill my ‘69 Camaro back then cost a whole four bucks and those twelve gallons of gas came with my choice of a knife, fork, or spoon. With enough gas purchases, we’d eventually have a set of matching flatware. Even though I’d built a rapport with the attendant and he’d throw me an extra piece every now and then, getting the complete set was going to take a while.
   It really wasn’t all that ugly. It just was not your high-quality flatware. The business ends were some kind of shiny metal shoved into handles made from wood or a wood substitute. Still, they worked and somewhere in the hopefully not-to-distant future we’d be able to lay our table with a matching set. Until that day we’d have to contend with daily dinnertime discord between our children.
   Even at a young age our daughters, born twenty-seven months apart, were very competitive. The older one was upset that her reign as the firstborn of a new generation had been infringed upon by this interloper with whom she had to share a bedroom. The younger one was born with an innate ability to push people’s buttons that she’s kept to adulthood.
   At every meal the first thing they would do was check their utensils. The younger one, if she happened to be dealt one of the good forks in shiny solid metal with a fancy filagree and her sister didn’t, would exclaim, “I got a pretty fork.”
   Of course, this caused an outburst from the older one. She cried that she wouldn’t eat a bite from an ugly fork and pouted until she got a pretty one. This went on despite my insistence that the food on the utensil was more important than the utensil itself. This argument had no effect on a four-year-old. We had to get her a “pretty” fork or else she wouldn’t eat.
   Our sons who came later, on the other hand, would use any means to get food to their faces no matter how pretty or ugly it was.
   Since parenting is a learn as you go activity I eventually figured out that the way to put an end to the fork conflict, as it came to be known, was to replace my younger girl’s pretty fork with an ugly one. They both used their ugly forks in sullen silence but at least no one was crying–not about a stupid fork anyway.
   Eventually we got a good set of matching flatware but the freebies from Mobil still had a spot in one of our kitchen drawers. As time went by they fell apart as whatever force that was holding them together gave out, or the faux wood handles cracked and broke. Still, that one ugly fork remains.
   Next time we’re all together for a meal I’ll see that one or the other daughter gets it and see what happens. The ability to push people’s buttons is one trait my younger daughter inherited from me.