My oldest son Tommy turns 27 years old this week. Since I featured a whole week of Sean when it was his birthday, I thought it was only fair if I did the same for the other two boys. All of these columns I'm posting this week are Father Knows Nothing columns that didn't quite make it into the book. This one is about headphones...
Tommy loves music, which is fine.
He also loves wearing his iPod ear buds all day and night, which is not. When I
call him to come down to dinner, he doesn’t hear me. I have to walk into his
room, and wave my arms in front of his face to get his attention. As you might
imagine, that can become slightly annoying.
Tommy also brings
his headphones with him wherever he goes. I have had many, many, many
discussions with him about this, and how rude it is for him to wear his
headphones in public, and after much debate we finally came to a compromise. He
could wear one ear bud, but not both of them. I figured that one ear was better
than none.
That little
agreement eliminated the most egregious offenses (like the time he worked for
me at a golf outing collecting money, and answering everyone’s questions with
“WHAT? What did you say?”), but he looks ridiculous with one ear bud dangling,
and he still can’t hear what people are saying to him if they happen to be
standing on the wrong side of his head.
They always say to
pick your battles, and after battling this one for years, I lost the will to
battle it any further. Then one day, we turned a corner. We were in the
doctor’s examining room awaiting the return of the nurse.
“Please take off
your headphones so you can answer her questions,” I asked him.
“I can hear her
just fine,” he said, pointing to his one dangling headphone.
Just as he said
that, the nurse walked into the room, and I got out of her chair to walk to the
other side of the room. I made one final appeal to Tommy as the nurse looked
over Tommy’s paperwork.
“Please take off
your headphones so you can answer her questions,” I said again. “You may not
understand what she is asking you otherwise.”
“I AM NOT PICKING
MY NOSE!” he said angrily.
When the nurse
heard this exchange, she laughed out loud. I laughed even harder. When Tommy
figured out that we were laughing at him and not with him, he turned bright
red.
“You didn’t say
that, did you?” he said sheepishly as he slid halfway down the chair in
embarrassment and shame.
“No I didn’t,” I
responded.
He took off both
of his headphones, and put them in his pocket.
