Common Sense? What's That?

• My first lesson in logic came over a family dinner. We had corn on the cob and I was deemed old enough to butter and salt my own. The first time I picked it up I dropped it immediately. Man, it was HOT. I tried again a moment later. I could barely hold it, so I set it down again. Tried again - this time it was uncomfortable but bearable. I buttered it, salted it, and bit into it. It burned the Hell out of my lips. I dropped it quickly. My father shook his head, looked at me, and said, "Goddamn kid. If it was too hot for your fingers what did you think it would do to your lips?"
  
  This was the first time that I consciously understood that one could reason from point A to point B. Better late than never.
  
  
• It was a hot day during the summer vacation between first and second grades. Running around in the heat, I built up a pretty good thirst. My mind wandered to a large bottle of Pepsi-Cola in the refrigerator.
  
  Open the screen door, through the living room, into the kitchen. It was a weekend or a holiday, because my dad was home. I asked for some Pepsi-Cola and he snagged a tall glass and the Pepsi-Cola bottle, which must have been too large for little hands, because he poured. Or it may simply have been that the table top was too high for me.
  
  The kitchen table was slightly below eye level and I reached up to hold the bottom of the glass while Dad poured. At some point I must have become frantic with desire for that drink, because without thinking (obviously) I suddenly snatched the glass off the table and began drinking. Only then did I realize that I had left Dad pouring Pepsi-Cola onto an empty table.
  
  "Goddamn kid!"
  
  
• Home alone, I was broiling a steak. After a couple of minutes I grabbed a potholder and opened the broiler to turn the steak over. As I did so, I heard just the slightest noise, as if something solid but tiny had fallen onto the floor. I turned the steak over, closed the broiler, and checked the floor. Sure enough a tiny metal nut had come unthreaded from something or other related to the broiler.
  
  With thumb and forefinger, I picked it up.
  
  With thumb and forefinger, I tossed it into the air to get metal that had been heated to 500 degrees or more away from my flesh.
  
  Before it hit the floor again I said aloud, "How could you be that Goddamn stupid?"
  

Memories of My Father

• My father used two expressions to demonstrate exasperation with my brother and me: "Jesus wept!" was used when we did something stupid but were too young to know better and "Goddamn kid!" was used when we did something stupid even though we did know better.
  
  Dad and I never could do anything together in the way of manual labor without ending up convulsed with laughter. This sometimes occurred with other things as well, but always occurred when there was physical exertion, such as heavy lifting. We would lift a bed, a bench, a dresser, and get two feet down a hallway or a sidewalk and begin laughing. We would try to keep moving but in no time at all we were helpless. We could not laugh and hold the weight. It might take four or five tries to get the object to its destination. During one of those tries I would hear him say, "Goddamn kid!" and I would collapse again.
  
  
• Dad was "handy," but I am not. He could fix cars, shingle roofs, whatever, whereas my practical skills are limited to changing the filler in a ball point pen. On a good day.
  
  (As an aside: I actually knew a man - a colleague - who was more helpless than I. In his middle age he married a European woman who could do anything. At one point she went to Europe for a couple of weeks to visit relatives. While she was gone a light bulb burned out and he called her in Europe to ask what to do about it.)
  
  Dad had remarried (my parents divorced when I was in the sixth grade) and lived in the boondocks. One day, when I was perhaps 30, I visited them, and he grabbed me and hustled me up to the roof to assist in some reshingling. I could not imagine why he thought I would be useful, but it turned out that the plan was for me to pass him tools, shingles, etc., while he did the actual work.
  
  I swear, we were not on that roof two minutes before we were both laughing hysterically and hanging on to the roof's peak in order to avoid sliding off.
  
  "Goddamn kid!"
  
  
• I was perhaps six years old. It was a Saturday and my parents were going to have adult company that evening. My father announced that he was going to drive downtown to a "package store." My folks were not drinkers and there was no liquor in the house, so I didn't know what a package store was, but I knew what a drive downtown with my dad was and I asked if I might go with him.
  
  We climbed into Old Betsy, the 1939 Chevy, and I got to ride shotgun, which was a rare treat. It was no more than a ten minute ride to town. Dad parked the car along the curb and went into a store, returning a moment later with something in a brown paper bag. He set it on the seat between us and began the drive home.
  
  "What's in the bag?"
  
  "Adult Pepsi-Cola."
  
  
• I was back from the Army, and my dad and I were visiting my dad's mother and aunt, my grandmother and great aunt, both of whom loved to play Scrabble.
  
  At some point Dad was playing the game with one of them. I was reading a book when I heard him say, "Donnie, how many effs are there in 'pontiff?'"
  
  I said, "Two," and stood up to look over his shoulder at his tiles, which were P O N T I F U. I continued, "'Pontifu,' however, has only one."
  
  "Goddamn kid."
  
  
• Early in my grammar school years, perhaps around the time of the second grade, I acquired for a brief period an obnoxious habit, a sort of oral nervous tic. Whenever I said anything or anyone said anything to me, I would repeat the end of the sentence under my breath. under my breath
  
  I recall that I did it for several weeks, but the only conversation I remember was with my father.
  
  "Donnie, come here a minute." come here a minute
  
  "Stop that!" stop that
  
  "Stop what?" stop what
  
  "Goddamn kid!" Goddamn kid