The other week during a slow day at the gym we noticed a father-son duo come in to work out. Dad was a heavy set burly dude in his mid forties, probably a high school footballer, now out-of-shape but still strong. Son was a wimpy, scrawny thing who evidently was like totally not into this at all, if he could help it, which he couldn’t.
I didn’t pay it more attention, apart from noticing that the only thing the duo seemed to share was a certainly joylessness.
Alas, the other day, the joyless duo were back at the gym, in the locker room as I was changing shirts. As dad walked away toward the wash basins he told his kid to fetch something from the locker. Do it! Now! He snapped in a low-tone commanding whisper.
Wimpy, sultry son obliged, spiritlessly.
Back at the basins dad handed the kid the shaving cream and told him to put it on with his hands. I noticed that the kid was about 13, and this was his evidently his first shave.
You’re getting it more on your fingers than on your face Burly Dad said, again in a disparaging mutter.
Everything the father said was calculated to be a critical, contemptuous put down in some subtle but no less degrading manner. Above all, threatening, a welling storm of breaking force behind the muttered commands and contempt.
As I sponged my face, I wondered what kind of funny quip I could make about my first shave. But nothing came to mind and I headed out for the gym floor.
When I came back they were still there. Dad was off by the basins, the kid was sitting on a locker-bench with his head in his hands and quite evidently close to tears.
I was about to give him a wink and a thumbs up when I heard the beast heading over. I went to my own locker and watched them head out. The human race is nothing to cry over but abuse of the helpless is an outrage all the same.
I know one never knows what family dynamics are at play. It is impossible to say that the kid isn’t an impossible brat or a lazy slob. It is impossible to say that dad isn’t trying to do his best. What can be said is that his best sucks.
We feel tenderness, happiness, hatred and anger not because we imagine them but because they are sensible, as much as warmth or stinging cold are felt because they actually are.
Glancing at that kid with his head in his hands, trying to escape his helplessness in his iPod, I could not but think of Nicki, hopeless in his cage at the pound after having the joy of life disciplined out of him by what i know was another heavy set asshole who had determined that “the dog” was “incorrigible”.
Only fools rush in where angels fear to tread and I won't. But i am pondering safe, sensible, official options all the same.
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