Timmy was Darling and Funny and Hyper.
Before going back to college after winter break, Larry and I spent some holiday fun time with Larry’s brother, Timmy, and his family.
Timmy was two years younger than Larry – so, mid-thirties. Unlike Larry, Timmy was married and had a daughter who was in high school. Kim was in her rebellious years, like me, and I related a lot more with her than I did with her parents. Timmy and his wife, Lee, were just old fogies like my own parents.
But I was confused. I didn’t want to give away my age by hanging out with the daughter. So I sat with Timmy and Larry and Lee at the kitchen table, listening to them complain about their daughter’s “phase” and wondering what to do about it.
I wanted to say leave her alone! She’s doing what she wants to do! Why can’t she stay out until 2 a.m.? What’s unreasonable about that? She’s 16 for God’s sake! But I said nothing. I frequently walked outside to smoke cigarettes and tune out the whole lot of them.
Fortunately Timmy also wanted to tune out the whole lot of them, so while Timmy also had a sports-themed bar downstairs, Larry, Timmy and I often went to the local VFW. I have no idea if Timmy was a veteran of a foreign war, although his age put him directly in the draft path for Vietnam. If he went to Vietnam, he never talked about it. But he sure did love that VFW.
When Larry and I were finally able to go off with Timmy to drink cheap draft beers, my biggest concerns were behind me. The daughter was no longer a confusion for me; I didn’t have to relate to her or her parents. Timmy and Larry could talk and I could just sit there and drink. The VFW even had Beer Nuts.
I sat on the bar stool and I ate Beer Nuts and drank beer; I stared at the scene around me.
At the VFW, my new drinking buddies were decades older than me. The men had pot bellies and bald heads and they wore hats that said VFW and Ford and Irwin Bowlers.
They talked loudly to the people next to them, so loud in fact that no one could hear the television over the bar, and nearly every one of them was male. Timmy talked louder than almost everyone else, able to carry an entire conversation across the bar and into the corners of the establishment if necessary.
Timmy was darling and funny and hyper, although I rarely spoke to him one-on-one. When I did have time alone with Timmy, it ended in a situation that I pretend never happened for fear of causing him harm 40 years later.
Timmy’s wife thankfully never wanted to go the VFW. She stayed home with “Kimmy” – who wanted to be called Kim – and neither of them ever ventured out just to get sloshed.
So I went and listened with one ear to Larry and Timmy blather on about bikes and cars, and listened with the other ear to the incredibly dull conversations around me, and with both eyes I stared at the TV. Being in the bar with these people fascinated me; it was like being an alien observing human life forms.
I was glad to be returning to college in a few days. It never occurred to me that this would be my life after graduation.
