Twenty-year-old guys think they’re cool. Forty-year-old guys realize
that those twenty-year-old guys aren’t cool, they’re idiots. This is called wisdom.
I
was a twenty-year-old guy once, and I was an idiot, although I failed to realize it at the time. If you’re a twenty-year-old
guy then one day you’ll understand.
Even a forty-year-old guy can become an idiot
when alcohol is factored into the equation, but when a twenty-year-old gets drunk he transforms from “idiot” into
“brainless invertebrate asshole.”
I provide the following story as proof.
Last
summer my family and I were enjoying a hot and sunny day by doing an 11km loop along the Bow River. Both kids were on their
bikes, my wife had her rollerblades, and I was running. This is a regular summer ritual for us, finished off with a well-deserved
ice cream at the stand at Edworthy Park. Because
it was such a nice day there were many rafters on the river, and a lot of them were quite obviously pissed to the gills. This
is the story of one such rafter.
My son took the lead, followed by my daughter
who had my lovely wife right behind her. I brought up the rear and struggled to keep up. Fortunately, I had the view of my
wife’s beautiful backside to motivate me to run faster.
After about eight kilometres there was an exceptionally
curvy section and a train track crossing where I was actually able to pass my wife and ended up right behind my daughter.
That’s when I saw the drunken rafter. Actually, I saw much more of him than I wanted to.
Now
I understand after beer has been consumed that in short order it needs to vacate the premises. One of the great things about
being a guy is that the world is your urinal, but discretion is always favored in such matters. I’ve befouled many a
tree in my day, but I’m pretty sure I’ve done this unnoticed, and I’ve made certain never to do so in proximity
to children.
This guy didn’t have my sense of modesty, I guess, because he stood
in the great wide open, facing the bike path, with his prized-possession waving and whizzing all over creation for any innocent
bystander to take note of. Considering there were ample trees and bushes nearby I found his judgment lacking.
I
ignored him with the hope that my daughter wouldn’t see, but I was not so fortunate. “Ewwww, yuck!” She
stopped her bike and pointed.
At that point I decided that making light of the situation would
be the best course of action. “Look [daughter], it’s like a penis, only smaller.”
“Yeah,”
she said, “and it’s really yucky too.”
Nothing like having your manhood burned by a
seven-year-old girl. I bet it ruined his day. I decided to deliver the coup de grâce. “You know, if my dick was
that small I’d keep it well hidden.”
Now I feel I should explain that normally I
am not so insulting to perfect strangers; I find that it avoids what could turn into an unpleasant confrontation. In this
case, however, I felt a little shaming might teach this young man a lesson and perhaps save another little girl further downstream
from a repeat performance of such a disturbing visage. What’s more, I wasn’t terribly worried about violence from
this guy for a number of reasons:
- He could barely stand
- There was an embankment and a six-foot high fence
between us
- I had at least thirty pounds on him
- If he did manage to stagger up the embankment, climb the fence, catch up to me,
and then somehow get the better of me, I had backup. My karate-expert wife was bringing up the rear, and she would have given
him a few solid rollerblade kicks to the temple and that would have put him down for sure.
As it
turns out, the best he could manage was a devastating retort: “Oh… oh, yeah?”
That
was good for a laugh. Hopefully he was not so intoxicated that he quickly forgot his public humiliation. I’d hate it
if such a righteous burn didn’t have a lasting impact.
