I am going to start this article with a couple caveats. First caveat being that you cannot tell a person’s physical ailments/limitations from a distance. Sometimes you cannot tell standing next to them. Second caveat is that a regular Pepsi can and a Bud Light can, again from a distance, are very similar, especially in color.
I was driving home from someplace I do not remember. I noticed a young man playing catch in his front yard. I then realized he was playing catch with a gentleman the right age to be the young man’s father. My initial reaction was, “how nice.”
This is somewhat of a not so fond remembrance of my childhood…said the 67 year old man. My father did very little with me. I do not remember him ever playing catch with me. He did take me fishing a handful of times. He also took me golfing with him, again a handful of times. Actually what I did was walk around on the golf course with him, occasionally pulling his golf cart for him. I got where I did not want to go as his favorite hole was the 19th. This particular hole left me sitting outside attempting to entertain myself until he was ready to leave. Occasionally this stretched into a “long piece”. For the uninitiated, the 19th hole is the bar at a golf course.
Back to our duet playing catch. The father was seated on a five gallon bucket in the driveway. Next to him was a blue can that to my eye as I drove looked like a Bud Light can. Yeah he was playing catch with his son, but I really wonder what sort of lesson was being learned here. I suppose the driveway beats the hell out of the bar at a rinky dink golf course. And maybe the father could not display Charlie Hustle traits for the caveat expressed above. And maybe it was a Pepsi can. And maybe the boy will remember this time fondly. Who knows? But from the wheel of my pickup, I was making less that favorable assumptions.
Of course, one of my deep regret is that I learned many of my parenting lessons from my father. I am sure my children suffered from those lessons. The human race muddles on despite it all, however.