Been There Done That

Been There, Done That

This is just a simple story about the older generation giving advice to the younger.

This story contains no sex.

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It was now well after dinner and David was sitting on the back deck with his father, brother, uncles, two cousins, and his grandfather. It was a Friday night in early summer, the college spring semester was over, and they had grilled the usual fare of steak and potatoes with the obligatory salads prepared by the wives and daughters. Now it was time to relax, sip their beer, and solve the problems of the day.

The same women who had prepared the underappreciated salads along with two pies that were very much appreciated were now in the living room comparing stories and debating why the men were never able to figure out how a vacuum cleaner works! "I mean, he can work on that damn car of his all day but ask him to run the vacuum and he looks at me like I'm speaking Klingon!"

"I thought it was Greek?"

"No, with my husband it's definitely Klingon."

The wives thought that was very funny and proceeded to do their best imitations of Klingon without knowing the language. It was a mixture of grunts and gargles in the lowest voice they could muster, and they all thought themselves very clever in the process.

Meanwhile, the discussion outside bounced back and forth between a seemingly random selection of politics, sports, and a particularly nasty speculation on which of their neighbors were getting something on the side.

"I tell you, if I were Jackson's wife, I'd kill him in his sleep!"

"If you were Jackson's wife, he'd want to die!"

Jim Hartley looked at his brother with that wry smile they had both perfected in their youth. "I think I'd make a very good wife! I'm loyal, faithful, attentive, I keep myself clean and pick up after myself..."

"You just described a golden retriever. You'd make an excellent family dog."

There was no coming back from that, so Jim just let it go and waited for the next topic.

"I'll tell you this much..." Jim's father-in-law said. "In almost fifty years of marriage I've never once been tempted. I met your mother..." He looked at David and finished, "...your grandmother, took one look at her, and never once considered running around on her. She was beautiful, sweet, smart, funny, and I knew from the very first day... that she'd cut my balls off if I ever tried!"

The laughter that followed was loud and perhaps tinged in pain, but every man on that deck knew that she had always been a force to be reckoned with. Growing up, Jim saw early on that it was his mother who ran the house and made every man toe the line, but she did it with love and affection and strength of will and not one of them ever complained. Well, at least not to her face.

"Ever wonder what makes a man like that tick?" Jim's brother-in-law Daniel was speculating. "Seriously. I get it. Life becomes routine. Some pretty young thing flirts and makes you think she might be available, and it might be tempting..." Daniel looked at his father-in-law and added, "...not that I would ever consider it!" With not-so-muffled laughter all around him, he continued, "But even if you get away with it, how do you look at yourself in the mirror when you're shaving and not be disgusted by what you see? And don't get me started on the risk involved! Divorce, or at the very least a long and unhappy life with a wife who never forgets what you did, is no life at all. Hell no! You view another woman like a red-hot stove - one touch and you will be in pain for a long time to come!"

Every man there understood that reality and quietly nodded to himself.

Jim's father-in-law looked at him and asked, "Is Jackson really running around, or are you just speculating?"

"Well, dad, I took your daughter out last Thursday for a no-particular-reason night out and after dinner I took her dancing."

"I knew there was a reason my daughter married you. I just couldn't figure it out until now."

Jim looked at his father-in-law with a crooked smile and said, "Thanks. So I take your daughter out on the dance floor and I'm doing my best not to step on her toes when she tenses up and starts banging on my chest. I step back and look at her like she's lost her marbles and not for the first time I might add. She points and there's Jackson with some bleach blond playing tongue tag in the corner of the room."

"His wife is a brunette."

"Hence, my wife's excitement."

"So what'd you do?"

"I wanted to ignore them, but Dee insisted that we leave. She didn't want him to see us as if somehow, we were doing something wrong!"

Again, while it seemed to make no sense to any of them, they all understood.

"So, ah... did my sister appreciate that you took her out for dinner and dancing?" Craig was smiling a little too much and Jim knew exactly what he was asking.

"Well, if you mean, did she spent the rest of the night getting worked up and madder by the minute over Jackson until she finally went to bed mad and never let me get a word in edgewise, then yeah, I guess she appreciated it."

Jim's father-in-law had long since stopped being protective of his little girl and resentful of his son-in-law, but he laughed the loudest of all at the thought of Jim's valiant, but failed, attempt at romance.

Jim took a surreptitious look at David. He had noticed his son's demeanor several times that evening and not once did David seem to crack a smile. He knew the problem but was reluctant to bring it up in front of all the relatives.

Sadly, Uncle Craig was significantly less aware. "David, why the long face? Did you get a bad steak?"

With all eyes now on him, David tried to look amused. With a weak smile, he said, "No, the steak was good. I've just got a lot on my mind. That's all."

Everyone waited for more, but it was not forthcoming.

David's Uncle Daniel knew the story and offered a reserved explanation. "He broke up with Becky last week."

"Oh, man, I'm sorry to hear that. I know you were getting serious about that girl."

Now David found his voice. "Yeah, well I guess I was a little more serious than she was. I didn't exactly break up with her. I caught her cheating on me and told her to go to hell."

The deck was quiet following David's outburst as the men considered how best to help their young relative come to grips with the unpleasant reality.

"I got out of class early and caught her with my roommate. It went downhill fast after that."

For a moment, none of the men knew quite what to say. Each of them had a similar story, more or less, and could relate. It seemed to each of them that betrayal was a rite of passage for a young man and the trick was to choose a better woman the next time.

"I remember my first bad breakup." Uncle Craig was trying to provide a reassuring voice. "Her name was Genny Baxter. We were ten and she tried to make me eat a worm."

The laughter around the deck was equal parts "That's funny" and "You're an idiot", but David was smiling.

"It still hurts."

Uncle Craig was getting no support from the group, but then he really wasn't looking for any.

Jim figured he could offer something a bit more sympathetic and said, "There are days when my wife..." Then turning to his father-in-law, he says, "Sorry dad... when my wife is just not easy to be around."

"Like when you catch Jackson sucking face on a bleach blond?"

"Good example. So when my lovely and normally very patient wife is in one of her moods, I think back to Barbara Jean Harris."

"Didn't they used to call her BJ for short?"

Very little effort was made to suppress the dirty chuckle that followed that remark.

"Yes, and for very good reason. Anyway, I took BJ to the senior prom..."

For some reason, that made the laughter a bit louder.

Jim looked around the deck and pretended to be annoyed. "Like I said, I took BJ to the senior prom, and she disappeared on me. I went looking for her and one thing led to another until I found her in the back seat of Billy Parks' Ford giving him a Barbara Jean. Well, I was slightly annoyed at that, picked up a rock, and smashed his driver's side window."

"I assume he drove her home?"

"No, I still drove her home, but there sure as hell was no goodnight kiss!"

In a disorganized chorus of voices, the men called out, "Eewww! Oh no! Stop! Please! No more!" and similar things said too quietly for the women inside to hear. The thought was more than a little disgusting to them all.

"Anyway, I think back to BJ, I mean Barbara Jean, and my wife's moods don't seem so bad."

As the group calmed and the noise died, Jim's father-in-law dropped a bomb on his grandsons. "That reminds me of my first wife."

His sons and sons-in-law bowed their heads in thought, but the grandsons were momentarily shocked.

"Pops?"

Looking at David, he said, "Your parents never told you?" His grandfather took a deep breath and began his explanation. "We married right out of high school. We were in love, or I thought we were. She got a job as a typist, and I went to work in the brick yard. We weren't making much money, but hell, we were in love, right? Anyway, I got home one day to find her banging her boss in the same bed we slept in every night." He looked hard at his grandson and said, "The next few minutes were interesting. He made a lot more money, but I was lifting bricks all day. Anyway, I spent that night behind bars, and he spent it in intensive care. Things were different back then and the judge decided he got what he deserved and gave me a few hours of community service. She went back to live with her parents, and I got my freedom. Without a wife to tie me down, I went back to school and got my college degree, met your grandmother, and you know the rest."

It was about this time that the women decided to join the men on the back deck.

Jim's wife broke the ice. "So what are you men discussing that's so serious?"

Not wanting to be completely truthful, and not wanting to lie to his wife in front of his father-in-law, Jim said, "I was just telling them about our seeing Jackson the other night."

"Oh, you didn't! We don't know what was really happening."

Jim muttered under his breath, but not so quietly that his wife failed to hear, "The hell we don't."

"What about Jackson?" Daniel's wife, Claire, knew a juicy story when she didn't hear it.

Jim stared at his wife until she caved. "We saw him out with some bleach blond the other night."

"Ooh, this just got interesting! Tell us more."

When Dee failed to respond, Jim said, "He was in the back booth at Gallagher's sucking on her tongue and Dee made us leave before it got really good."

Dee wasn't sure whether to be annoyed with her husband or join in the condemnation.

"That reminds me of Billy Gallagher." For a moment, Claire seemed lost in thought. "You remember I dated him for a time in high school? I caught him with Deborah Beth Denkins in that same back booth of his family's place. I was wearing his ring and he was making out with the class slut!" It wasn't until then that she realized she was speaking in front of her sons, nieces, and nephews and immediately toned down her rhetoric.

"What did you do, mom?"

The men tried desperately to keep a straight face, but she was called out and with nowhere to go.

"Well, I broke up with him like any woman with an ounce of self-respect would."

Her husband wouldn't let her off that easily. "Claire, either you tell the boy the truth or I will." Daniel was smiling too much to be angry.

Claire hesitated for a moment, and then with a visible show of both embarrassment and pride she said, "I grabbed a handful of her blond hair and ripped it out by their dark roots. Then as he was getting out of the booth, I kicked the dirty cheater in the... valuables, threw his ring in his face, and stormed out of there."

"Way to go, mom!" There was general mayhem around the deck as husbands, wives, sons, and daughters expressed their approval of her actions.

In time the deck was once again quiet as everyone remembered his or her own story of betrayal.

"Jimmy Parker." All eyes turned toward the youngest of the group.

"Beth?" Whatever she was thinking, her father Jim had never heard this story. Glancing at his wife, he realized that she had been holding out on him. "Dee?"

He got a nonverbal "Shush" for his troubles as everyone waited for Beth to tell her story.

"I caught him coming out of another girl's dorm room. He was zipping up his fly, so I'm pretty sure he wasn't helping her with her math homework unless he was helping her count to one! She was standing in the doorway wearing a short robe, so, you know what they say... If it walks like a slut and fucks like a slut, it's a slut."

Jim had a dozen different questions running through his mind at this point and he didn't like any of them. One thing was for sure - if he ever ran into Jimmy Parker, they were going to have words!"

Those who knew, which means the men, would surreptitiously take a glance in David's direction trying not to alert the women. All told, he seemed to have brightened up just a bit, and while he was still feeling the loss and the pain of betrayal, he was beginning to think he was not alone, and it would all work out in the end.

There were a few more stories of frustration, disappointment, and betrayal until the subject was finally exhausted and the conversation turned to happier topics. There were birthdays to plan and more cookouts to prepare for. The single women had dates the next night and the single men were planning to hit a few of the night spots in hopes of amping up their own love lives. The married folks had less adventurous plans while each was reflecting on the conversation that evening and thinking that maybe a little extra effort was called for when they got home.

After everyone had left, Jim caught up with his son. "I'm sorry about that. I know it wasn't easy telling everyone about Becky."

David thought for a moment and then hugged his dad. "Actually, I think it helped." Then with a conspiratorial smile he said, "I never heard that story about pops having a first wife. Is that true?"

"Well, I wasn't there, but that's what your mother tells me. Apparently, your grandmother told her as one of those lessons that you don't always get a do-over in life. It's good to know."

David was nodding. "I was surprised that everyone had a story to tell. It made me feel a lot better about my own situation."

"So, you going to give Becky a second chance?"

David thought for a moment and then shook his head. "Like you said, dad, you don't always get a do-over."

Jim had always been proud of his son, but he was also relieved that along with a kind heart David knew that there comes a time when a man must stand up for what he deserves and expect better. It was a hard lesson for a good-hearted young man like David to learn, but necessary, and Jim had a strong feeling that his son was going to be fine.

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So there you have it - just a basic night of shared stories and lessons learned that gave the older generations the opportunity to teach valuable lessons and give words of support to the younger ones as they grew and struggled with the sometimes-difficult experiences that constitute a life.