Spend about 60 years with someone and some things are bound to rub off.
I was at work the other day and a colleague left me to retrieve something from the backroom. She had been gone for ages, when she finally returned to find me smiling like a fool.
“What are you smiling at?” she asked.
“I was just thinking about my father, and something he used to say when I was a kid, when I’d be taking forever with something he asked me to fetch,” I explained.
“And what’s that?” she wondered aloud.
“You’d be a good one to send for the devil,” I replied.
She looked puzzled at first, eventually realizing that no one is likely to send you for the devil, nor very anxious for you to return with him.
I hadn’t actually heard Dad say that since I was a kid. Dad passed away a couple of years ago and the memory prompted me to consider me some of the other things I heard him say when I was often his unwillingly apprentice on any number of menial tasks.
All too often my role in these endeavours was to retrieve necessary tools and to hold a trouble light so Dad’s hands could be free to perform whatever task we were trying to accomplish. A common mission was to locate and bring back the screwdriver appropriate for the job.
“I want the large Robertson from my red toolbox,” he’d say, as I distractedly nodded. “You got that?”
I’d nod again and turn on my heels.
Now, I could be distracted by pretty much anything, whether it be the TV or the family cat. I took the art of dawdling to new levels. In fact, I haven’t changed a great deal in that regard as an adult. As I searched (and I use that term loosely) for the desired implement, my mind could be anywhere, but more often than not it was contemplating the fate of the Toronto Maple Leafs, and whether they might be featured on that Saturday’s Hockey Night in Canada telecast.
So, when I’d fail spectacularly on my mission (and return with the devil), Dad’s reaction was predictable.
“That’s not a Robertson!” he’d holler. “That’s a GD Phillips head screwdriver!”
Lest you think Dad was abusive, in his defense I was a rubbish understudy. He was just at his wit’s end with my level of incompetence, because I lacked three critical things: focus; ambition; and any interest at all in the project we were working on. So, any negative feedback received was warranted.
“You’re as useless as two teats on a boar,” he’d declare, as he stomped off to retrieve the tool himself. For the purpose of this column, you’ll notice I’ve used the more clinical term for the female body part rather than its more vulgar slang derivative.
I hadn’t yet come across a boar in my young life and thought he was saying “board,” and I was content with that, as such appendages on a long narrow piece of wood would be equally “useless.” It was many years later that I learned the difference.
When I wasn’t bringing the wrong tool, I could be counted on to muff the simplest of tasks, like holding the trouble light for my father. Just being still for 30 seconds is a lot to ask of a 12-year-old kid, let alone having to hold something motionless in my hand at the same time. I’d squirm and I’d fidget to the point where the lamp was no longer illuminating the task at hand but shining directly into my father’s eyes.”
“Horse’s necktie,” he’d blurt out in frustration. “Will you hold that light out of my eyes?”
“Horse’s necktie” was a phrase which never made any sense to me, and I never asked Dad to explain it. In the interest of education, I decided to Google it, and it turns out the phrase is “occasionally used as derogatory term or insult in certain English dialects.” Imagine that – Dad was using the Old English all along. How posh!
While I was Googling, I thought I’d see if I could find out why they call it a trouble light. I didn’t really get my answer but did discover that the tool is defined as “a special lamp used to illuminate obscure places and able to handle moderate abuse.” So, it turns out I had something in common with the trouble light I was precariously holding all those years.
Many years later, thankfully, most of our interactions occurred while playing crib, and the critiques became much more playful.
“Who taught you to deal?” he’d say, grimacing at the cards in his hand.
“You did,” I’d answer.
It was the only adequate response, because it was actually the truth.
When my front peg struggled to keep pace with his back peg, I was likened to a suckling calf with the expression “sucking the hind teat.” And when I took too long shuffling the cards, there was the familiar: “Will you deal those things before you rub the t—s off the queen.” Seems the udder or breast of the female mammal came up a lot in our discourse over the years.
For my entire adult life until his passing, if Dad and I were together, there was a crib board between us, and if your job were to record our conversations on those occasions, then you just might die of boredom, so familiar had the banter between us become. But it was our happy place.
The phrases one might hear at a card play can sometimes border on the downright silly. On a recent trip to the weekly crib tournament at our local Catholic church, with the two teams tied coming down the final stretch, one of our opponents uttered the profound words: “One more each and we’ll be tied.”
I think Dad would have liked that one.