Allow Me to Explain

We hide, my brothers and me. You see there were a lot of things we didn’t learn growing up. Not just the regular ineptitude at cooking and sorting laundry, I’m talking about some serious deficiencies in social interaction. Send a ‘thank you’ card? I told them in person, isn’t that better? Being seven years younger, I think I’m probably a little behind my brothers on the re-education process. SB has only had a few years to get me caught up, so I should be careful about lumping my brothers in on this.

A big deficiency is in good gift giving and gracious gift receiving. To explain I’ll offer two causal scenarios. First, for the last seven or eight years I lived with my parents every xmas they would take me to the mall and say “you have $50, get whatever you want.” They would then buy those things, wrap them up, and put them under the tree. I got in the habit of picking out things that all had the same size box, just so I could wonder which one was which.

I can’t begin to list the gifts my father has been ungrateful for. So I’ll tell you the last one I know about. After my Grandfather passed away, my dad decided he wanted to give each of his sons something that had been his. So, he gave my oldest brother a pocket watch he had bought for himself. Then he bought another pocket watch, kept it as his own for a few years, and gave it to the next son, etc. So, he was eventually without a pocket watch. My mother bought him one for xmas just a few years ago, the last xmas I will ever spend with them. My father used to collect coins. It’s a hobby he had to give up when he got laid off from his job in the early 1980’s. My mom bought him this nice pocket watch with a silver dollar mounted in the lid. He opened it up in front of me, my brother, nephew, and mom. He looked at it, frowned and said:

“Why’d you buy that? ... It’s not even a rare coin.”

Well, no shit dumb-ass. What moron would weld a rare and expensive coin into the lid of a pocket watch to get scratched and marred every time you let the grandkids play with it in church? Ungrateful pig; it’s no wonder I hate Christmas.

Still, the most damaging deficiency isn’t thank you cards, gift giving, or table manners. It’s our inability to deal with emotions or to empathize with someone else’s emotions. That's what we hide from. My oldest brother has it the worst I think. Like a pointy eared Vulcan he can raise one eyebrow, turn and walk away from any situation without so much as uttering a single word. Me, I hide behind bad jokes and poor humor. I’m the irritating twit who can tell a knock-knock joke while they’re dropping a casket into the ground. It may not be as physically offensive as Katherine Gallagher, but I still hate being that guy.

So, if you’re expecting me to say something warm and fuzzy, and instead I tell you the one about the preacher’s daughter, please believe that I’m actually trying to be supportive.