When’s the last time someone came to your house, drank your beer, ate your snacks, and told you that your life was a waste?
Matt’s senior prom was this past Friday. He had a bunch of his friends over to take pictures in our back yard. And a few minutes before all of them were to arrive, Sheryl let me know that a bunch of their parents would be coming along, too. (You can imagine how charmed I was about that.)
While the prom goers mingled on our lower patio, their parents chatted up each other on our deck. Seemed pretty simple. It was a beautiful day, the weather was perfect, and we were heading into the golden hour. Instead, one of the kid’s dads gave me a golden shower.
As with all suburban parties in 2009, the talk turned to the economy. How bad the stock market is. Who’s to blame. One dad, who I didn’t know from Adam’s Off Ox, was really bent about it. He said the financial community were all criminals. That they wrecked everything. I tried to change the subject, because you can’t swing a stick in our neighborhood without hitting someone who’s in financial services. The conversation was getting a little…tense. So, I stepped in when he started talking about employee stock options.
Me: It’s funny, I spent a good chunk of my career doing global stock option implementations. Now, with what’s happening in the economy, I’m spending a lot of time getting them back from employees.
Him: See, you wasted your life. You haven’t done one thing to add value to the economy or society. That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about.
Me: Um…(glad I’m not 25 anymore, so thoughts of pushing him over the railing quickly subsided)…I have this house…I own these chairs…paid for these drinks… I poured what was left of my beer over the railing. A good friend of mine stared at me and was on the verge of laughing out loud.
Me (again): Well, this conversation is over. And this party’s over.
Those of you who know me know that I have a bad habit of doing this thing with my hands that I learned from Yul Brenner when he played Pharaoh in The Ten Commandments: I whisk people away when I’m mad. I did that. And the guy, along with his wife, got going.
To prove that I’m still a juvenile, I pointed out the back of his khakis to a friend of mine. Mr. You Wasted Your Life had been leaning against the railing of my deck for a while. The back of his pants were filthy. He used his butt to wipe a winter’s worth of grime from my deck railing.
I couldn’t stop laughing. The high school seniors were more mature than me. Then again, they have a whole life to waste ahead of them.
