Creepy Old Man, part 2
Continued from previous entry: [ Part 1]
My wife didn't want to have any contact with Uncle Sherman in her parents' house. No problem, I figured. While her brother played the role of the "heavy", giving Sherman a stern talking-to about the rules in the house, I'd play the wingman. While Sherman was in the house I'd keep him engaged in conversation in a different room so he'd have no chance to approach Hawk.
As mourners filtered in to the house I sighted my bogie. A frail man in his 70s with a twisted spine. Walking with a cane and wearing braces on both of his legs. Wearing a hearing aid and thick glasses. Just looking at the guy I started to feel sorry for him.
I was confident as I began my first strafing run as wingman. It seemed like it would be easy. Sherman wore a "Korean War Veteran" ballcap like a billboard on his forehead, providing an obvious target. BTW, when I say like a billboard I mean that thing really was conspicuous. It was overly large, with bold print, bright colors, and sequins. Yes, sequins. What a clod, trying to make it about himself in a house of mourning.
I asked Sherman about his military service. He gave brief answers to my questions about when he served, where he was posted, and with what kind of unit. Then he tried to disengage. I attempted to parlay it into a conversation about Korea today, leveraging my knowledge of the country from numerous business trips in the past 6 years. Other Korean War vets I've spoken to share my fascination with how the country they witnessed as bombed-out huts decades ago is today a prospering export power, and enjoy talking about it. But Sherman was totally uninterested in hearing any anecdotes other than his own. (Again: making it about himself.) So I fired a political cluster bomb. Boom! He couldn't resist the bait of ranting about What's Wrong With America Today. Fox News version, of course.
My next mission as wingman was easier. Sherman had taken a break to hoover up all the most expensive foods from the buffet before anyone else arrived. (Later I heard that he was stuffing cold cuts in a bag to take back to his hotel room.) I figured that's why he was eager to disengage from our first conversation. As a crippled old man he's more interested in a roast beef sandwich than a 10 year old girl now!
As Sherman came back from sweeping the buffet into his tote bag I noticed that he also had a large camera bag. I made a show of fishing my own camera out of a bag I'd stowed in the corner (because at a funeral people really don't want lots of pictures). Sherman saw my camera and chatted me up about it.
One of Sherman's hobbies is trolling flea markets to buy and sell cameras and lenses. He's into 35mm film gear from the late 80s through mid 90s. I'm familiar with gear from that era because that's when I started practicing photography. It turns out he knows all kinds of tech specs but he's not terribly bright about applying them to the technique of photography. The fact is, most 20 year old cameras are worthless today. Technically and artistically an inexpensive digital camera today eclipses what all but the best film gear could do. But Sherman isn't a connoisseur, parsing out the best stuff of a bygone era. No, he's a fiddler, dealing in kit that was commodity tech 20 years ago and is rubbish today. Apparently he ekes out an average of a few bucks per swap trading that junk with other trifling old-timers like himself.
Through these conversations I developed a picture of Uncle Sherman as a man as pathetic looking on the inside as he is on the outside. A sad shell of a man, really. One who may have been imposing and scary when he was younger, decades ago. But not now, after the ravages of time.
This contrast of now vs. then made me reflect on one of the difficulties of lengthy punishment. Whether you're talking about keeping a man in prison at age 70 for a crime he committed at 18, or merely giving him the stink-eye, the challenge is you're not punishing the same person. It was a hot-headed young man full of himself who copped feels with women and tried grooming children years ago; not the weak, old, trifling man who bears the same name decades later. Past some point compassion requires forgiveness, even for someone who never admitted his wrong.
But then he did it again.
To be continued: [ Part 3]
My wife didn't want to have any contact with Uncle Sherman in her parents' house. No problem, I figured. While her brother played the role of the "heavy", giving Sherman a stern talking-to about the rules in the house, I'd play the wingman. While Sherman was in the house I'd keep him engaged in conversation in a different room so he'd have no chance to approach Hawk.
As mourners filtered in to the house I sighted my bogie. A frail man in his 70s with a twisted spine. Walking with a cane and wearing braces on both of his legs. Wearing a hearing aid and thick glasses. Just looking at the guy I started to feel sorry for him.
I was confident as I began my first strafing run as wingman. It seemed like it would be easy. Sherman wore a "Korean War Veteran" ballcap like a billboard on his forehead, providing an obvious target. BTW, when I say like a billboard I mean that thing really was conspicuous. It was overly large, with bold print, bright colors, and sequins. Yes, sequins. What a clod, trying to make it about himself in a house of mourning.
I asked Sherman about his military service. He gave brief answers to my questions about when he served, where he was posted, and with what kind of unit. Then he tried to disengage. I attempted to parlay it into a conversation about Korea today, leveraging my knowledge of the country from numerous business trips in the past 6 years. Other Korean War vets I've spoken to share my fascination with how the country they witnessed as bombed-out huts decades ago is today a prospering export power, and enjoy talking about it. But Sherman was totally uninterested in hearing any anecdotes other than his own. (Again: making it about himself.) So I fired a political cluster bomb. Boom! He couldn't resist the bait of ranting about What's Wrong With America Today. Fox News version, of course.
My next mission as wingman was easier. Sherman had taken a break to hoover up all the most expensive foods from the buffet before anyone else arrived. (Later I heard that he was stuffing cold cuts in a bag to take back to his hotel room.) I figured that's why he was eager to disengage from our first conversation. As a crippled old man he's more interested in a roast beef sandwich than a 10 year old girl now!
As Sherman came back from sweeping the buffet into his tote bag I noticed that he also had a large camera bag. I made a show of fishing my own camera out of a bag I'd stowed in the corner (because at a funeral people really don't want lots of pictures). Sherman saw my camera and chatted me up about it.
One of Sherman's hobbies is trolling flea markets to buy and sell cameras and lenses. He's into 35mm film gear from the late 80s through mid 90s. I'm familiar with gear from that era because that's when I started practicing photography. It turns out he knows all kinds of tech specs but he's not terribly bright about applying them to the technique of photography. The fact is, most 20 year old cameras are worthless today. Technically and artistically an inexpensive digital camera today eclipses what all but the best film gear could do. But Sherman isn't a connoisseur, parsing out the best stuff of a bygone era. No, he's a fiddler, dealing in kit that was commodity tech 20 years ago and is rubbish today. Apparently he ekes out an average of a few bucks per swap trading that junk with other trifling old-timers like himself.
Through these conversations I developed a picture of Uncle Sherman as a man as pathetic looking on the inside as he is on the outside. A sad shell of a man, really. One who may have been imposing and scary when he was younger, decades ago. But not now, after the ravages of time.
This contrast of now vs. then made me reflect on one of the difficulties of lengthy punishment. Whether you're talking about keeping a man in prison at age 70 for a crime he committed at 18, or merely giving him the stink-eye, the challenge is you're not punishing the same person. It was a hot-headed young man full of himself who copped feels with women and tried grooming children years ago; not the weak, old, trifling man who bears the same name decades later. Past some point compassion requires forgiveness, even for someone who never admitted his wrong.
But then he did it again.
To be continued: [ Part 3]