
One of the most often commented behaviors of mine is the habit I have of saying "good morning" irregardless of the time of day. I picked up the habit from one of my Shoney's bosses, Thom, the guy who worked the split. i didn't realize I'd picked it up until I landed at my first engineering job where i actually had to answer the phone. Most of the time, the bloody thing gets answered so that it stops ringing, not because my thought process has switched to answering it. So, I say "good morning". It's been pointed out to me often enough that I'm usually aware of saying it. I keep it up because I like to mess with people's heads. Or, what Dad would have called "giving grief."
He was a big believer in giving someone a hard time - especially if he thought the experience would teach them something. To improve my confidence in deep water he'd grab ahold of an arm or a leg until I freed myself. That experiment only lasted until the day I panted a heel in his groin. To make Squid aware the dangers of driving on ice he pulled the parking break during parking lot drills. I thanked God I learned to drive in the summer when I heard that story. And, to keep me from getting a big head he enlisted help from a school bus driver.
Now, if you read yesterday's post you know that I walked to school my entire childhood. That much is true; but, on about twelve Saturdays a year I'd roll myself out of bed to get ready for a speech meet. Like the band, we traveled as a team and for the better part of four years Buck drove our bus. I didn't know it at the time; but, we had it made. He'd show up on Saturday morning with a warm bus. He hadn't just driven the bus over from the bus barn next door; he'd driven it from his friend Mark's barn where he kept the bus. Sometime during my sophomore year, I began to notice that every time I went to get on the bus after a meet Buck would let the bus coast forward a bit. He did it at every meet, and I played along, until his last one as our bus driver. As I exited the bus that time he said to me, "Tell your Dad I did as he asked." Turns out, Dad worked with Mark who kept the bus for Buck and had passed word to give me a hard time.
I thought of this grief givin' today because The Bert Show did a follow up to yesterday's screed about fat people. I listened to part of what they had to say and realized that what set me off about the piece was the tone. Grief givin' as Dad practiced it was usually obviously mischeveious and had a take away I could find. The Bert Show opinion is a piece of writing meant to be hurtful. The writer vented their spleen in a way that wasn't helpful, it was just mean.
I do have to say though, that I'm glad Dad gave grief. It was like passing though the school of muted knocks and made me aware that things could not end (or have middles) in a way I would hope.