Opportunity Lost



My trip to the baby doctor with Lynn yesterday was fairly uneventful. The little dude still has a great heartbeat, and his mother is doing about as well as can be expected under the circumstances. Apparently it’s normal for a pregnant woman’s internal organs to get squished up into the roof of her mouth as the baby gets bigger and bigger.

Anyway, the nurse had her teenaged daughter there at the office with her–something about a lame pep rally, classes weren’t being held, etc.–and sometime during the general pre-pee-in-a-cup chitchat, it came up that the girl attended Bush-Mann High School in Middleboro. It was interesting, because we have some friends who live and work in Middleboro now, and one of them actually teaches at that school. Even more interesting is that it turns out our good friend, Adeline Novak, is one of the girl’s teachers, and is actually among her favorites.

Cool, great, yay, and Lynn was happy because she knew it would make Adeline happy. But I had a grand opportunity there that Lynn wouldn’t let me explore… and I’m sure I’ll regret it for years to come. You see, it’s the easiest thing in the world to start rumors–hurtful, funny as heck, whatever–amongst little kiddies like the one we had access to yesterday. For some reason, at her old school some little stoogie asked if Addy’s husband, Carter, was a Jew. And, no, I had nothing to do with that, unfortunately. Anyway, the rumor got out that my curly-headed friend of jackboot-wearing German descent was actually Jewish. I’m not sure what impact, if any, that particular bit of silliness had on Adeline’s career at that particular school, but obviously any of a number of other potentially damaging falsehoods could just as easily have come up. And I wanted so badly to start one myself, given the unrepeatable opportunity that had so unexpectedly presented itself to me. But I didn’t do it. Lynn was all, “That’s mean” and “you’ll damage our friendship” and “why would you do that, you fat-headed gravy sucker,” and it kind of got me off my game a little bit. Before we left, I told the girl to treat Addy well. Honestly, I said that, and that’s all. Of course, what I wanted to say was, “Treat her well because she has a mentally handicapped husband to tend to at home, and can’t put up with any foolishness out of you.”

That would have been awesome! But then, maybe it wouldn’t have been. Maybe Lynn was right after all. She did have some good points… and I do like my gravy…

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