My Father's Notion of Morality

The boy and his girl friend stopped over last night. Given the mysterious directions a conversation can take, somehow ours found itself in the realm of the times that they were beaten by adults. I was shocked to find out how much a part of the boys life it had been prior to his moving in with me, from the men his mother would unwittingly and temporarily inflict upon him. I was doubly shocked as to the frequency the girl's father felt compelled to use a belt on her. The boy made note of the fact that I had never so much as raised my voice to him, even when the cops brought him home for attempting to steal a birthday present for his mother. Until this conversation I don't think I ever truly understood the source of his subdued nature when he first arrived, and the ease in which it left him when he first truly put that cornet in his hand and understood he would be allowed to play it.

The girl asked me if my father had ever used the belt on me. I was going to tell her absolutely not, when a memory came back from Lord knows where to assure me that was not correct. The memory was quite a revelation, and I have given it considerable thought since its arrival. Now, do you think what I believe is the one and only time my father struck me was for lying, though I am sure he was aware I did some of that from time to time, or maybe taking his money, another offense he was probably aware I was guilty of, or maybe a fistacuffs I had with a kid back stage that did not endear the Houlihan's to his parents, or me to mine, given the shiners we gave each other that would be hard to fit into the act? Do you think it was for breaking any of the commandments a seven year old (about the age when the long forgotten event occurred) might be capable of that all these bible thumpers are just beside themselves about? No. My father took me by the ear, through the hotel lobby, up to our room, and spared no energy applying his belt to my seven year old backside for showing disrespect to a doorman.

Now, the boy and the girl were dumbfounded by this story, which was odd given that it seemed the girl could earn a thrashing for nothing more than being an irritation to her old man, but you would have to know my father's priorities to know why I, at least from hindsight, would not consider this extraordinary at all. You see my father believed that what made our transient life possible was the presence of these good people. He told me that they are the ground upon which we walk. That if we stand at all, it is upon their shoulders, not the other way around, and this was and is true. We vaudevillians would have been lost babes in the woods without the stagehand, doorman, bellhop, porter, policeman, taxidriver, waiter or waitress, because we were strangers everywhere we went and needed the fact they were not whenever we arrived.

Now, you might be inclined to think that was then, and that day is gone, but you would be wrong. This computer assumes electricity, the grocery store assumes a farmer, the starbucks coffee my daughter assumes will be available each morning on her way to work assumes the person behind that counter, hot water on a cold night assumes a furnace man, and the furnace assumes that when the main breaks on a subzero night (which is the only kind of night it does break) that some unlucky folks are going to be out there replacing it while we bitch and moan because nothing happens when we turn the faucet, and don't get me started about what is assumed when we walk into a WalMart, which apparently at least a few of us do from time to time given that they need in excess of a million underpaid people to fill those assumptions.

If my father were alive today, he wouldn't know where to begin applying his belt.

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