Some People Have to Learn the Hard Way

                My son, Adam, once initiated a freestyle lesson in Spanish.  He was about six, so the lesson consisted of him asking me to translate various words from Spanish into English for him. A big problem with the lesson—indeed a major flaw in this whole thing—was that he didn’t exactly “know” any words in the Spanish.  He knew quite a bit of gibberish, but I still tried to help him as best as I could.

                “What does ‘fasololo’ mean in Spanish?” he asked.  Now, let me be honest for a moment, I don’t remember the exact words in gibberish that he wanted translated from Spanish to English—or the translations I provided him—but that shit isn’t important.  I was laying down some classic, dad-level bullshit.

“’Fasololo?’ That means ‘table’ in Spanish.”

He asked me a couple others, like “dongo” and “wakookie.”  I gave him answers.  “That means ‘coat rack,’” and “That’s how you tell a girl she’s pretty.”  There was a bunch of stuff like that.

Now, I’m not sure why he thought I knew Spanish.  I had just graduated from college with a minor concentration in French, and he knew that I’d been doing French homework for a while.  I had probably told him that I’d taken some Spanish in high school, but I certainly don’t remember much of that.  I could have taught him how to say, “Como se dice ‘fankobabi’ en Español?”  But I didn’t.  I really failed that kid on the whole Spanish thing.

But, anyway, as our little Spanish lesson was running its course, he asked me what “kobubo”—or something like that—meant in Spanish.  I replied, “Oh, my goodness! Don’t ever say that again!  That’s a really bad word.”

“What does it mean?” he asked.  I really had his attention.  Adam has always had an affinity for foul language, and this was quite a tease for him.  I did not relent, so he never found out what it meant, because it was gibberish, of course, and I was making this stuff up as the conversation progressed.

However, for context, let’s just say that “kobubo” means “fuck your mother” in the Spanish I was making up for Adam.  See what I’m saying?  That’s a really bad thing to say.  I did the right thing not teaching that to a six-year-old.  I stand by this.

Now, when I first thought of writing about this impromptu Spanish lesson, I wanted to tie it in with the time Adam learned to use the proverbial “C-word.”  Don’t worry.  It was pretty funny, and, heads-up, I’m going to be dropping the “C-word” on you in a bit.  But I wanted to tie the two episodes together by using the Spanish lesson as an example of a time when I told Adam not to use a word because it was bad, but he didn’t learn to follow my advice.

But that wasn’t the lesson at all.  Indeed, if Adam learned anything from the Spanish lesson, it was that I’m not 100% trustworthy.  I mean, now, as an adult, he has an appreciation for the fine art of bullshitry, but when he was a few months shy of eleven—at the time of the C-word incident—so he was still a pretty concrete thinker.  And my word, perhaps, was rather dubious.

Now, about that C-word.

For about six years during my marriage, we lived a couple blocks from the high school in Old Town, Maine.  During the summer, the high school pool was open to the public.  The kids, especially Adam, were huge fans of going to the pool.

He loved to swim, and he pushed himself to master the skills he needed to have access to the deep end and the diving boards.  He would have spent his entire day there if he could some days.  For a while, my ex-wife, Kathy, and I wouldn’t let him go without his older sisters.  We didn’t necessarily expect them to “supervise” him, but we did expect a full report.  Now, we realized that his older sisters weren’t going to tell us everything.  Kathy and I had both been kids before, but looking back, we at least subconsciously knew that Krystal and Kasi, our older two daughters, had a relatively low threshold for embarrassment, and we’d at least hear about a lot of Adam’s actions that embarrassed them, if not everything he did.

Ultimately, he was able to go alone.  We may have caved in a little for him.  He was so, so consistently persistent about wanting to go to the pool on his own, and the girls didn’t always want to go.  They were about thirteen and fourteen at the time, and they had lives to live.  We felt that this was safe for Adam to do there in small town, Maine.  Besides—and now that I think of it, as this was the summer before he turned eleven, the summer when I was unemployed and trying to focus on the ol’ job search—I could always go up and check on him, and I often did. 

I’d usually walk up to the pool, oh, every other time or so, and I’d see how he was doing.  The lifeguards liked him, because he was—and still is—really funny.  I’d check in with them and make my presence known to him, and I’d walk home.  What an idyllic life we led in those days, kids going swimming while mom worked and ol’ Ted desperately searched for worked before the unemployment ran out.  Ah, yes, these were pretty good days, indeed, the unemployment notwithstanding.

Until. . .

One Friday evening, Adam had gone to the pool for the couple hours it was open after dinner, and I went to check on him.  His older sisters certainly weren’t going to watch over and report on him, for they were having a sleepover with a couple of their friends.  And young Amber was home tagging along with her older sisters.  The girls were probably planning a fashion or talent show—as they often did.  What a glorious, fun-filled evening of family time we had ahead of us.

Now, I’m not sure exactly what prompted me to go see what Adam was up to, but I’m willing to bet that it was Kathy.  She always had—and still has—a pretty amazing intuition when it comes to the kids.  She and I have been divorced for five years, but if she tells me that she has a gut-feeling that something may be going amiss with the kids, I believe her.  Still.  She probably just said something like, “Why don’t you go check on Adam,”  while she was in the living room with the girls as they planned their talent show or painted each other’s nails or whatever girl stuff they had planned.  I don’t really remember what they were all doing.  I just remember that their lives were about to change. 

So, I walked up to the high school, a very short walk from what we all refer to as the “white house,” a reference not just to where we lived but to a period in our time together as a family.  From our driveway we could see part of the high school parking lot, and I walked the hundred-or-so yards there.

I had made it to the parking lot when I first heard it.  “Ice cream cunt!”  I recognized the voice immediately.  Adam has a pretty distinctive voice, and I could pick it out of the crowd of boys on the patio area outside the pool.  Oh, but I could hear him.  Adam can, shall we say, project.  I heard “Ice cream cunt!” a few more times as I sped up my approach.  And, yes, those were the exact words.

The Old Town High School pool has been the home of a number of state championship swim teams over the years.  The banners were proudly displayed in the gym, and the school records were displayed above the bleachers by the pool.   And just outside, on a fenced-in patio area, my son shouted, “Ice cream cunt!” so close to where so many champions had so nobly represented good ol’ Old Town High.

“Ice cream cunt!” Adam yelled.

I had cut across the grass in the most direct route, as soon as I’d recognized the voice.  I could see him surrounded by teenagers, who, for their own amusement, were clearly prompting him.  When I got close enough that he noticed me—and perhaps my expression—he stopped.  “Adam,” I said, “Get your stuff.”

He stopped yelling it, and the peckerhead teenage boys who had been just moments prior encouraging him, well, I don’t remember too clearly what they did next, besides disperse.  I vaguely remember what was probably a few “uh-oh” looks on their faces along with a few smirks.  I don’t remember saying anything to them, but I may have.  I do remember staring daggers at them. 

And Adam and I walked home.  Our conversation was rather cyclical.

“I don’t know what ‘cunt’ means!” Adam would say, pleading with me.  And, retrospectively, I must give him credit for his honesty.  He did not, at that time, know what ‘cunt’ means.

“Look,” I’d reply, “You can’t say that.  It’s a bad word.”

“But I don’t know what ‘cunt’ means!”

And that was no lie.  The kid had integrity, and I’d like to give him credit for that now, for I could not, then.  “It’s just a really bad word. You don’t ever want to say it, especially in front of your mom or sisters.  Just don’t”

“But I don’t know what ‘cunt’ means!”

And around we went, for all those couple-hundred yards that we walked home.  And Adam has what you might call “voice modulation issues.”  That kid’s voice carried.  He is and always has been an animated and gregarious presence, and he’s always fun to be around.  He’s really funny.  But as I think about him and his lively presence, I can’t help but think about how that conversation played in the neighborhood.   I mean, sure, Adam has heard me yell, a lot, maybe more than anyone else in the world, but I usually tried not to broadcast my displeasure all that publicly.  So, on that summer night, these many years ago, I imagine that anyone in their living rooms or sitting on their back decks or even anywhere near an open window along that street, I imagine they heard that succession of Adam yelling, “But I don’t know what ‘cunt’ means!” with pauses in between when I would quietly plead with him not to say that word.

That word.  The “C-word.”  Cunt.  Let’s talk about “cunt” for a moment.  “Cunt,” that most profane and dreaded synecdoche.  Most people, especially the women-folk, aren’t big fans of it.  Some people just don’t care.  Some people just use it to push a button.  Like any profanity, it carries a certain amount of weight—“fuck it” expresses so much more frustration than “damn it.”  “Cunt” is a heavy one, indeed.    Motherfucker, bitch, cocksucker, cunt, asshole, these words are not meant for polite society or for my gentlemanly conversations.

I do use these words, though.  I don’t really use cunt so much but it has come up in conversations of mine recently, most recently by a woman who was doing some serious venting.  There’s nothing like a nice string of profanities, punctuated with a “cunt,” to let some steam off.  I do it all the time—again, not punctuated with a “cunt”—and often at work.  I mean, I mostly do it under my breath at work, but many times, I’m sure, it can be heard in neighboring cubicles.

And where did I learn this foul language?  A few, I learned when my parents let them slip in front of me.  Most of us learn a few of them that way.  Some, I learned in movies.  I was eleven-or-so when my family first got HBO.  “Cunt”, along with a few others, I learned from my dear brothers.  They were three and eight years older than I, and I often tagged along with them around the house.  I learned a lot from my brothers, a lot of “what not to do” kind of stuff.  If nothing else, I learned the value of discretion.  This lesson served me well in my high school years. 

Early on, I thought “cunt” was merely a naughty way to refer to a lady’s vagina.  As the years passed, I learned that a lady might not like the use of the word “cunt,” especially when it is used metonymously.  I did not have to learn this first hand, but I’m not sure where I learned it, probably the movies.  That’s where normal people learn dirty stuff.  Isn’t it?  I also may have learned it by watching friends make the mistake the mistake of using it.  Lesson learned.

Adam, on the other hand, didn’t always learn from the examples set by others or from a parent telling him not to do something.  Perhaps it’s part of his charm, but Adam, unfortunately, had to learn the hard way.  Ah, the perils of being an almost purely experiential learner.  I tried to tell him.  I honestly did.  That “I don’t know what ‘cunt’ means” conversation, that happened.  Just don’t say that word!  Not good enough for my Adam.

Could I have just told him that “cunt” is what “kobubo” means in English?  Perhaps, but for starters, I’m pretty sure Adam wouldn’t have remembered any of the words from the informal Spanish lesson.  Also, that would have been a lie.  We’ve established that “kobubo” means “fuck your mother,” not “cunt.”  And after the whole gibberish from Spanish to English lesson situation, I couldn’t risk another blow to my integrity with Adam.

Now, should I have told him that “cunt” is a slang term for “vagina” that we just shouldn’t use?  In the moment, that seemed like the worst idea, ever, but perhaps just telling Adam what a cunt is might have prevented what I now recall as the most embarrassing part of the whole “Adam learns the word ‘cunt’” episode.  He may have learned the dirty secret of what the word means, but the spread of the word may have been limited, at least on my watch.

And there we were, Adam and me, back from the pool.  Our “I don’t know what ‘cunt’ means” conversation had not, exactly, come to a resolution, other than me hoping, desperately, that he wouldn’t use the word again.

We got to the house, where the girls were probably in the middle of their fashion show.  My memory of what Adam and I walked into isn’t really clear.  I just know that Kathy could easily tell that something had happened, partly because she just knows stuff like that—it can be creepy—and partly, obviously, because Adam was home with me well before the pool closed.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Some teenagers were egging Adam on to shout something he shouldn’t be saying when I walked up there,” I replied.  “I’ve been trying to talk to him about it on the walk home.”

“What did he say?”

“He was using the ‘C-word,” I said.

“But I don’t know what ‘cunt’ means!” Adam blurted out.

And again, he did not.  Indeed, he did not.

Kathy, for her part, was not exactly pleased with this turn of events, and she was in Adam’s face with a very loud, “Don’t you ever say that again!”  Adam may just get his voice modulation

Adam and Amber, a couple years
 after the "episode."

issues from his mother.

Looking back, I now have to assume that this is when my daughter’s learned the word “cunt,” along with their two friends.  I don’t remember a conversation with their parents the next day about my son introducing their daughters to the word “cunt.”  The aftermath of the “cunt” episode hasn’t really seared itself into my memory the same way the event, itself, did.

One thing I do know is that as I’ve been thinking about this situation, I felt like I had let Adam down.  Could I have prevented this incident by explaining to him that those weren’t Spanish words that he wanted me to translate into English?  Probably not.   And I surely would have regretted not making up English translation to his gibberish terms.  That was an opportunity of a lifetime.

On the other hand, could I have just been a little more understanding with him?  I could have just stopped on the walk home, gone to one knee to be on his level, and looked him in the eyes with my hands on his shoulders and said, “Adam, please don’t use that word.  I can’t tell you what it means right now.  It’s just a bad word.  I never say it, and those guys were jerks for teaching it to you.  Let’s just leave it behind us.”  I sure could have said that.

Hindsight being what it is, I could have done a lot of things different, but the question remains.  Would anything I might have done stopped Adam from using that word in front of my daughters and their friends?  Probably not.  Adam, he learns from experience.

When we first moved into the white house, after having been on the first floor of a duplex for a while, Adam tried a little experiment with the stairs.  He was living full time in a house with stairs, and even though he’d been in plenty of houses with stairs, he had to try something.   On a quiet afternoon soon after our move, Kathy and I were sitting in the living room when we heard a crash and an “Ugh, that hurt.”  We rushed into the hall to see Adam at the bottom of the stairs.  He had jumped from the top to see what it was like.  He was okay, but he’d learned his lesson. 

Now, let me ask you, do you think that there’s anything I could have said to prevent the kid who jumped down a flight of stairs “to see what it was like” from saying “cunt” in front of his sisters and their friends?  Me neither.  You see, Adam, Ol’ Adam, he had to learn things the hard way

I Live by a Certain Code

Well, that seems a bit more dramatic than what I’m going for here.  I don’t want to come across like one of those crazy Guantanamo Bay marines from A Few Good Men.   I just believe in returning favors and that sometimes for someone to get me to do something, I may have to get him to agree to reciprocate in advance.

Now, I don’t do things for people always expecting something in return.  I try to be a good person, and I try to do good things for people.  That’s just the right thing to do.  I try not to expect anything in return.  All this being said, I also try to do what’s funny.  Sometimes, I can effectively blend good deeds and humor.  Sometimes, being funny trumps that.  A man has to live by some standards.

Anyway, during my last drill weekend in uniform, in May 2013, before I became a member of

Me and my trusty M16 on our last day together.

the retired reserves following my 20-plus years of combined active and reserve service, I was presented with an opportunity to do a solid for one of my fellow soldiers.

That drill weekend was a four-day training event in Camp Ethan Allen, Vermont.  My battalion was spread-out with detachments from Maine to New Jersey, and for the last six or so years of my service, we’d been getting together for battalion-wide training at least once a year instead of doing our regular thing at our various detachment locations.  I hated these weekends, fucking hated them.  They often meant no booze, officially anyway.  That last weekend, I had a stainless steel water bottle filled with Jameson’s, because I was a God-damned rebel.  But this was my last drill weekend.  I was in good spirits, so the six-hour bus ride didn’t bother me.   I was almost free, and I had some whiskey. 

On our first morning, I was doing KP--kitchen police, for you civilians out there.  It may be odd for many to think of a Staff Sergeant doing KP, but I was in a small detachment:  just about everyone had one of these stupid jobs to do on these weekends.   I preferred KP over waking up in the middle of the night for fire guard.  Screw that waking up in the middle of the night bullshit.  Anyway, I was doing KP for breakfast, and I was helping  to clean up after morning chow, when Sergeant First Class Hatch, my detachment chief, came up to me.

“Hey, Ted, can you do me a favor?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied.  “What’s the favor?”

“Can you try to qualify this weekend?”

This may need some explanation. . .

So, I mentioned that this was my last drill weekend.  Late in the previous September, I had received my “20 Year Letter,” meaning that I had 20 good years of combined active and reserve service, creditable toward military retirement, for which I will start collecting a pension when I turn 60.  For a few drill weekends after that, I kind of went off the rails.  I was kind of an unpredictable asshole around my unit, and these weren’t exactly the best few months of my many years of military service.   That’s another story, though.

One thing on my unit’s training schedule while I was “off the rails” was a range day for my unit.  During our October drill weekend we had to qualify with our individually assigned weapons.  This happened just about every October, and during our combined battalion training events in the spring, anyone who didn’t qualify would have a chance to try to qualify again, if needed.

Over the years, I’d become very proud of my ability to qualify on the first try.  This hadn’t always been the case.   During basic training, I’d internalized the four fundamentals of marksmanship:  breath control, site picture, trigger squeeze, and relaxing.  I was the perfect soldier, except for the whole “relaxing” thing, I’d misinterpreted the living shit out of that.  Nobody noticed this until around my tenth year of service.   I’d usually hit 18 or better, out of 20, from a supported position, with my non-trigger hand and the barrel resting on a sandbag.  I’d also usually fail to make it to 23 total hits the first time from a non-supported position, with my non-trigger hand holding up the barrel.  So, I was a pretty shitty marksman until someone in my reserve unit was coaching me during one of our range days, and he said, “Why are you holding your weapon so loosely?”

I told him that I was just relaxing, and he explained to me that the whole “relaxing” fundamental thing meant to just relax, but you still have to hold your weapon firmly. 

Noted.

So, having figured this out, with the help of ol’ Staff Sergeant Buckley, I qualified as a marksman or sharpshooter, on the first try, every time, for about the last half of my military career.

Until, of course, the last time.

Now, in October 2012, with my 20-year-letter in hand, I simply did not give a fuck anymore

This is me, actually
giving a fuck.

and went off the rails—again, that is another story.  So, why bother wasting M16 ammunition on me when I was so close to putting in my retirement paperwork?  There were plenty of people in my unit who could have used those 40 rounds, either to practice or to just meet the requirements after a failed attempt.  So, I decided that trying was a waste of time.  Instead of just refusing to fire—which probably would have sufficed—I took the more hilarious route, and I decided to aim all of my rounds into a single silhouette.

Allow me to ‘splain.  For M16 qualification, the minimum standard is usually hitting 23 out of 40 targets on a range where the targets randomly pop up at varying distances, from 50 to 300 meters away.  The range is programmed for a machine to pull each target up in a set order for a set amount of time.  Sensors register each hit, and the target will drop after a hit or after the set time elapses.

I saw a documentary once that showed how this started.  In the World War II and Korean War eras, soldiers fired on circular targets as they learned to use their weapons.  The documentary discussed the invasion of Iwo Jima and how a large number of American soldiers and marines didn’t fire a round.  The defense of the island was so furious that many of our boys kind of freaked out (my interpretation) and didn’t fire back. Of course they didn’t respond, for they had been trained to fire at circles (my oversimplification).  So, the US Military came up with the whole pop-up target thing, with targets in the general shape and size of a person that popped-up to be shot.  The stimulus, as the documentary described, was seeing an enemy silhouette.  The response was to shoot him.  Stimulus-response, BF Skinner would be so proud.

But, these ranges are expensive, millions-of-dollars expensive.  So, unless there’s an active duty base or regularly used National Guard training area nearby, a lot of guard and reserve soldiers use an alternate, paper target to qualify, like the target in the picture below.

As you see from the paper target I’ve shown—and I’ve used this “alternate target” every time

Only five of these glorious 38 hits counted. 

but once in my reserve career and even a few times during my regular army years—there are ten silhouettes to hit.  And depending on variations in the standards—and they’ve changed over the years—you have to get three to five rounds in each silhouette from various firing positions for the shots to count.  In the picture, only five of the hits in the 50 meter silhouette counted.  I know, bullshit, right!  I told everyone that I scored a “38, because I waited for them to get close enough for me to take the high-percentage shot.” 

Now, I’ll admit that it is pretty “lame” that I missed the 50 meter silhouette twice, but I also must point out that I wasn’t trying my hardest.  I figured that any rounds I fired were a waste, and I was trying to make that obvious, in the most hilarious way possible.  Sure, there were some people who didn’t get it.  There always are.  “You know all those don’t count, right?”  No shit.  I was a soldier who was off the rails, not a fucking moron.  And I’m not sure why people didn’t get it.  I’d made a point of telling everyone that I didn’t give a fuck anymore.  (Again, that’s another story.)

Oh, and this led to the most hilarious and awesome “needs improvement” supporting comment on my final Noncommissioned Officer Evaluation Report, something along the lines of “Purposely failed to qualify by aiming all 40 rounds into the 50 meter silhouette.”   Also, telling everyone that “I didn’t give a fuck” anymore led to another “needs improvement” on that evaluation.  Apparently, making public professions of “not giving a fuck” displays a “lack of military bearing.”  Well, whatever.  I went out in style.

Anyway, that’s what I thought about my marksmanship score.  Whatever.  But apparently, a certain battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Dan “Big Dan” Cloyd, wanted to clear my poor showing of “five” from the battalion’s readiness stats.  Sure, I had less than a month left on the battalion's books, but if Big Dan, my favorite battalion commander, ever, wanted me to try, I just might have to take something seriously, for a change.

Or would I?

You see, ol’ Hatch had made this whole “qualification thing” about the two of us.  He asked me if I would try to qualify as a “favor” to him.

So, I asked him, “Can you do me a favor?”

“What is it?” he asked.

Then, I opened the curtain on one of the longest running gags in the repertoire of the Ted Perrin Theater of the Absurd.  “Ask me if that’s a banana in my pocket, or if I’m just happy to see you,” I said.

Yeah, perhaps this might need some explanation, too.  You see, in military dining facilities, you can always take hand fruit with you after your meal.  In my barracks rooms, throughout my military career, I always had plenty of oranges and apples to snack on.   Indeed, that’s where I discovered that pairing orange sections with a nice pilsner was a great treat.  I didn’t put orange wheels in my beer.  I just ate the orange while sipping the beer.   For that idea, you’re welcome.

Anyway, one day, after lunch—probably in Bamberg, Germany—I put a banana in my pocket and walked around my battalion headquarters, where I worked, and I had people ask me if I had a banana in my pocket or if I was just happy to see them.  My reply was, always, “It’s a banana.”

I used that gag in many a dining facility in many duty stations, on many of my fellow soldiers.  I used it in Bamberg and Babenhausen, Germany; in Fort Hood, Texas; in Riyadh and Dhahran, Saudi Arabia while on deployment; during my annual training periods in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri and Fort Lewis, Washington; and on many a guard or reserve training base throughout the northeast.

That's it, The banana in my right ammo
pouch.  That was the one that had been in my
pocket.  I wasn't "happy to see" anyone.

For some reason, this often made people feel uncomfortable.  Some people even suggested that this might be “kind of gay.”  Let me say this, as a heterosexual man, it’s not gay if you have a banana in your pocket.  And I’m sure that I’ve had more bananas in my pockets than just about anyone in history, so I’m an expert on the subject.

Now, if you randomly ask me if I have a banana in my pocket or if I’m just happy to see you, you’re on your own.  I cannot guarantee the contents of my pocket.  But if I ask you to ask me that question—unless you’re someone really, really special, and you’ll know if you are—just assume it’s a banana. 

I hate showing my hand like that, but seriously!

And, yeah, the request was out there.  “Ask me if that’s a banana in my pocket or if I’m just happy to see you.”  A very simple request, that I have a difficult time believing Hatch hadn’t received before, or at least hadn’t witnessed before.  But he looked at me, having asked me to qualify “as a favor,” and given this simple request in return—just a little something for my troubles—he said, “No.”  And he walked away.

Now, I ask you this.  Would you have been able to “try to qualify” that day and then be able to look yourself in the mirror and feel that you’d done the right thing?

Actually, you probably could.  But me, when a man asks me for a favor and won’t even ask me a simple, harmless question in return, I just can’t let myself be taken advantage of in that way.  I traffic in some next-level ethos, y’all.

Luckily for my friendship with Big Dan, they ran out of ammunition on the M16 range that day—see what I mean about wasting rounds on me—so I didn’t have to aim all 40 rounds into the 300 meter silhouette and disappoint him. 

And I’ll always have that shitty evaluation report to put an exclamation point on my marginal service.  You’re welcome, America.