Sparing old ones and tearing new ones.

Don't let the fanny pack fool you.

"Don't push me 'cause I'm close to the edge, I'm tryin' not to lose my head!"  

~ Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five

For those who read this blog often, you probably feel like you know my dad. My wonderful, awesome father. . . . just a couple of years shy of seventy and filled with energy that would rival any seventeen year-old. The guy who is the head counselor and founder of Camp Pa Pa and who spends his west coast afternoons doing Skype vocabulary words with his grandson some two thousand miles away. Full of easygoing wisdom and patience. . . . .yep. That's my dad.

Well.

Although I can say with certainty that my father, Mr. Tony Draper, has always been a good guy. . . .I can't exactly say that he's always been as . . . . how shall I say it. . .zen as he is nowadays.  Ha! Back in the day, my pop was known for not only being a firm disciplinarian of his own children--he also was the dude who could and would tear someone a brand new you-know-what if they tried him.

Oh. . . .that 1970's - 1980's version of Tony Draper.  . . . .sigh.  Man, he had a way with words. And talk about going to bat for you!  As long as you didn't mind hearing an f-bomb or two during the defense, he was a good person to have in your corner. Because my father?  Oh man. Nobody intimidated him.

Now. It's not that this part has changed. It's just that he has now crossed into the land of the "wise and white-haired." That place that makes the people around you bite their tongues a wee bit more which puts people like Tony Draper at less of a chance of dropping f-bombs and emmer-effer bombs in their direction. Yes. The land of the "wise and white-haired." It's this nirvana where people generally avoid saying or doing things to you that could potentially get them cussed out. They hold their smart-ass remarks a bit more and try to take the high road out of respect. I am convinced that THIS has far more to do with this Y2K upgraded zen-like version of my father than anything else.

Growing up, we called it "pulling a T-Tone."  (I'm not sure why we started calling it this--but I know my brother started it and it stuck.) We could always see it coming, too. Kind of like the day that my sister Deanna got a 'B' on her test because she didn't list "Oceania" as a continent.  Dad marched right up to that school with his briefcase and three-pieced suit to talk to the teacher after he'd insisted that Deanna had missed that question.

Wait.

I know you are like, "Seriously?"  And to that I say, "Yes. Seriously."  See, it wasn't so much that the dude was dead wrong about this bootleg geography fact.  It was that it resulted in an alteration in my sister's grade and also a smug interaction in front of my sister's class where he tried to take her down a couple of notches.

Awww hell naw!

Mess with Tony Draper's kids? Fuggeddaboudit. He would be up at that school before you could say Rumplestiltskin.  So up he goes to Monroe Junior High School where this dude is sitting behind his desk with a half wet-half dried out Jheri curl correcting papers. Seventh grade Deanna is shuffling her feet behind him because she could already smell it in the air. One false word and her daddy was 100% guaranteed to pull a T-Tone up in that classroom.

Now. Let me explain a bit about seeing a full on "T-Tone" getting pulled. It first involves a few rhetorical questions. Next it moves to direct logical questions. And if something comes out wrong. . . . that's the point of no return. Basically, the voice goes up several decibels and somebody gets put directly in their place.  Oh, and did I mention? Rarely are those words censored.

So as you might guess, the whole 'B' for Oceania didn't go so well for that quasi-Jheri curl teacher of Deanna's and I think at some point he recorrected all of the tests in that bootleg geography course. All secondary to having had a T-Tone pulled on him.

This explains where a lot of my spunk comes from. I'm not really put off by confrontations, in fact, I'm pretty much a "bring it" kind of girl in most instances. This, I attribute to witnessing many a T-Tone getting pulled in my day. On baseball fields, in PTA meetings, in my front yard, and yes. . .sigh. . .even when he was president of the School Board.  My stealthy dad could always be counted upon to be not really a loose cannon per se. . .but a cannon in every sense of the word.

I do realize that my dad grew up in a different time than me. Being born in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1940's is a far cry from Los Angeles in the 70's that's for sure. Maybe that has something to do with his reactions over the years.  And maybe not. I'm not sure.

Anyways.

That brings me to the other day.  Last week, I was hustling after work to the YMCA for Zachary's basketball practice.  I had just left work and grabbed both boys and was pushing it on time. With Zachy's practice gear in a bag, we ran as fast as we could into the locker room so that he could get changed. They whined as usual about going into the Ladies bathroom with me, but expecting a five year old to change his on clothes in the boys bathroom wasn't going to happen--especially when time was of the essence.

Alright. So in we go. Me in that rush-mama way and them dawdling just enough to make me want to punch a wall. Isaiah sits on the bench next to me as I pull open a locker and begin helping Zachary get his shirt over his head.  I'm digging into his gym bag looking for his fresh pair of socks when all of a sudden I see this older woman walk by us. She's dripping wet from the swimming pool and has a towel wrapped around her waist. I look up and offer her a quick smile of salutation.

Her response?  A steely blue-eyed scowl and these words through gritted teeth:

"What are they doing in here?"

I looked from side to side to make certain she was talking to me. Both boys looked up at her, Zachary with one arm in his shirt and one out, and Isaiah from that bench with my iPhone in his hand.

I assumed she was poking fun at the kids and me so I looked over at them and said, "Yeah, guys. What are you doing in here?"  I chuckled and went back to what I was doing.

"No. WHAT. ARE. THEY. DOING. IN. HERE?" she demanded.  This time I noticed how her hand with the intricate network of prominent blue veins was gripping the towel on her waist. She was serious. Dead serious.

"Umm, are you, like, serious?"

"I am TOTALLY serious! There are NO BOYS ALLOWED IN HERE! THEY SHOULDN'T BE IN HERE!!"

At this point, she had the full attention of me, my boys and a woman with long dreadlocks standing behind her near the fresh towels.  That dreadlocked sister froze and raised her eyebrows in my direction -- sensing a potential T-Tone in the making.

That angry-lady went on. "THE SIGN CLEARLY SAYS 'WOMEN'S LOCKER ROOM'. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT WOULD MAKE YOU BRING TWO BOYS IN HERE! YOU NEED TO GET THEM OUT OF HERE!!"

I looked down at my kids who were looking at me.  See, this was not 1978 and they don't have a track record of seeing their mama cuss people out in such situations. Furthermore, this woman was significantly older than my own father which was something I had to factor into my response -- along with the fact that my kids were watching.

"I think you need to lower you voice," I decided to say. My voice was controlled and firm. Deliberately low. This involved no f-bombs or permutations of the b-word. I was proud of myself and glad for her that this involved me and my kids and not Tony Draper and his.

"I think YOU need to get these boys out of here," she shot back while still ice-grilling me with those beady little eyes of hers.

I swallowed hard and looked back at her with my head cocked to the side. I licked my lips and sighed hard and prepared to open my mouth. Just then I caught that woman at the towel rack looking at me. She was giving me a tiny head shake . . . . telling me to chill. Her expression also affirmed what I was feeling.

I cleared my throat carefully. "I think you need to realize you are speaking to a grown-ass woman and take your tone down about twelve notches."  My kids quickly shot their eyes over to me after hearing that word "ass." This was serious. I leaned over and addressed the towel rack dreadlocked woman directly."Do you know if there is a family locker room in here?"

She smiled and replied, "I think there's one further down the hall and around the--"

Angry-lady interrupted, still dripping with water and her nasty attitude. "There's a BOYS LOCKER ROOM for BOYS and a --" 

I put up my hand and stopped her. "I'm done talking to you." I felt my voice rising and worked to control it. "Ma'am, you need to move away from me and stop talking to me like this. Especially in front of my children. It's unnecessary for you to be this rude." And then I added again for emphasis,  "Especially in front of children."

She didn't give a damn about me or my children. "If you had just READ THE SIGN on the door you would have not brought boys into the WOMEN'S LOCKER ROOM!"

Awww hell naw.

Immediately I imagined myself grabbing her up by her one piece swimsuit and saying, "YOU GOT ME EFFED UP, LADY! YOU BETTA BACK UP 'FORE YOU GET SMACKED UP!"

That certainly crossed my mind, although that's not what happened next.

Surely this steely-blue-eyed woman was banking on the fact that she was now old enough to have crossed into the land of "wise and white-haired." I also think she believed that this made her safe from having a forty-one year black woman go postal on her in that  YMCA locker room.

I won't even tell you about how I was at the YMCA that is right in the very neighborhood where they filmed "Driving Miss Daisy"--  and that this woman was the Doppleganger of Miss Daisy herself. Some part of me felt FOR SURE like that whole Miss Daisy thing made her feel like she could talk to me any old kind of way. And to hell with the fact that my kids were right there. That kind of pissed me off more.

You know? In that moment, I sort of understood my dad and his fire a little better. If I lived through things like this all the time, I might be close to the edge a lot, too.

Yeah.


I know. The other possibility is that she was just a cantankerous old lady with bad manners whose cataracts only allowed her to make out the silhouettes of my boys without so much as even a clue of anything else.

Maybe.

Thank goodness for the dread-locked sister at the towel rack. This time she put up one hand and waved it at me. She mouthed, "Not worth it." And she was right. It really wasn't.


I scooped up the kids and headed out of the bathroom.

I sat there seething and tapping my foot on the bleacher for the entire basketball practice. I replayed the scene over and over but inserted escalating versions of my responses to that angry-crazy lady--from me jumping in her face scaring her to death all the way to me catching a case.

Ha.

I guess the only good thing about that situation was that it was blogworthy. And it gave me a context in which to explain the art of pulling a T-Tone.  Okay. And yes, I should have been in the boys or family or whatever locker room and not the women's one, I know. But seriously, was it really that serious? I mean really? Jeeze.

Man. So here's my question--what's the rule on these types of situations? Is there a statute of limitations or age limit on getting cussed out? (And yes, I mean to keep saying "cussed out" and not "cursed out" because there is a difference.) What would y'all have done? Should I have pulled an old school T-Tone--complete with expletives--just for old times' sake?

Sigh. Part of me wishes that I had just done it for the story. . . . . and blamed it on my upbringing afterward.

"You talking to my mama?"

***
Happy Sunday.

Now playing on my mental iPod. . . .