I am experiencing a moral dilemma of sorts and I’m not quite sure how I should handle it.
Do I do what my pappy would have done — face up to it, look it in the eye, growl and then kick it in the butt?
Should I call that bastion of morality, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, have her berate me and call me an idiot enough times until I am convinced she’s correct?
Should I just close my eyes and hope hard enough that it goes away so I won’t have to deal with it?
All these options. Who would have thunk life was so hard?
Do I tell my boys their dad was/is of the nerd persuasion or do I let them think I’m the coolest thing since striped shirts and blue polyester pants? The thing is, you never think you’re not hip while you’re living it. You are just you and everybody else is just everybody else. When you’re not cool, there is no cool. Everybody is equal. Come on — how many of you didn’t wear argyle socks with polished black wing-tipped shoes to school?
It’s not until you leave the environment of your uncoolness that you see, gasp, the inequity of the cool gene — some have it and the rest are geeks. And, if you’re like me, you move on . . change your ways . . . put away the pocket calculator, lower your pants a little below the belly button, comb your hair and bury the uncool gene as deep into your psyche as possible.
You move on and you forget. You live, learn, love and go through life as, if not a cool guy, an average joe.
I would have still been in a state of denial had my Uncle Jim McDonald not delivered some of my Mom and Dad’s old LPs. (Kids — LPs are ‘long-playing? discs of vinyl, that when ‘played? on a ‘record player? reproduced recorded sound, usually music. This was accomplished by spinning said LP at about 33 revolutions per minute on a ‘turn table,? and placing a ‘needle? on it. Sound would transfer from grooves on the LP to the needle and with some sort of electronic magic move through wire, amplifier and to the speakers.)
This whole unhip thing reared its ugly, four-eyed head last week with an entire box of my parents? Reader’s Digest treasury of music. I remember these records back from the late 1960s. The set had all the classical symphony stuff, pop standards, military favorites, show tunes and movie theme songs.
Good, easy listening stuff for my groovy, swinging 1960s parents. Not sensible listening for their messy-haired, floodwater panted, going to public schools in the 1970s son. The sight of those records brought back memories I had shelved away — shelved away for my own protection.
I didn’t need to remember that when Mark Reene, Scott Ferguson, Ed McGinnis and I bowled after school at Cherry Hills Lanes, we’d start the game with a recording (from my folks? Reader’s Digest collection) of the theme song from that western movie classic, The Magnificent Seven. For good reason, I didn’t need to remember as the music played we would, one at a time, make our entrance down to the alley. Oh yeah, babe, we were cool.
I, too, didn’t need to be reminded of The Clarkston News article on cross-sport playing Clarkston High School athletes, written by Al Zawaki — with a picture of yours truly, in my bowling stance, ball about chest high, located just under the tie I had worn especially for the interview.
Can you say squaresville, dude?
I had forgotten all those things. But, now I remember and I don’t want my boys, Shamus and Sean, to know. Dear wife Jen knows that I ain’t hip and she loves me anyway, but the boys . . ah, the boys. Do I perpetuate the myth that their old man is the coolest dad this side of the Pecos River? Or do I come clean with the dirt?
One is a lie. The other is, um, embarrassing.
See what I mean, it’s a dilemma or moral proportions. So, what should I do?
Comments for his geekness, Don, can be e-mailed to: dontrushmedon@aol.com