Not Sure Whose Will Be Done

I’ve long detested men who cultivate trademarks and eccentricities.

Far too many in my past and present who wear garish socks, or inappropriate hats, or bizarre haircuts or outlandishly-sculpted facial hair, or a certain color of clothing every day (because the world needs more Johnny Cashes), or who steeple their fingers when offering their ninth-hand opinions, or who fondle pipes and cigars because a certain professor did so, or who carry hundred-dollar water bottles snapped onto their noncombatant and too-wide hips.

It’s one thing to have a natural quirk; many men have them. But to read the biography of a famous or infamous man and then affect an eccentric mannerism or clothing style because HE did is to make everyone at the rodeo uncomfortable. No poseur gets away with it. Everyone sees. Everyone knows. Even if you’re a fat chef making millions by sweating into the chili, you can’t wear shorts and orange Crocs without being mocked and reviled. You’ve invited it upon your own sloping shoulders. Men like Stonewall Jackson probably gave rise to more spastic weirdos than they could have ever imagined. “I’ll eat lemons and refuse to smile…that’ll make an impression!”

Still…

I aspire to eccentricity.

Not to establish social-cred with the watching world, but to bring meaning to the interior lives of the next generation.

In my youth, pretty much every boy had an eccentric uncle or grandfather or some such relative. These older men were often wildly unpredictable, socially questionable, nerve-knottingly frank. The other adults in the family would excuse or wink at what Uncle John or Grandpa Frazier said because, well, that’s just how he is. You have to get to know him. He’s a fine man. He’s just a little…different. Not in the drag queeny way, but in the cuss at the television and occasionally try to pick fistfights with the pastor way. Eccentric relatives were a way of life. They were a given. They were expected.

Not today. Hell to the no.

Today, older men are expected to toe the nicey-nice line. Grandfathers mind their P’s and Q’s because they know they might get banned by their own children from seeing their own grandchildren if they let slip one of those alphabet words (the n-word, the f-word, the g-word, the L-word, the supercalafragalistic-word) in the presence of one of the fragile and petulant entitled little gods who will be running the show in a few years. Uncles won’t crack a beer in the presence of their nephews because the nephews will be informed in careful whispers that the uncle as a “drinking problem.” Beloved family friends wouldn’t say “shit” if they had a mouth full because, well, in-a-gadda-da-vida-PROPRIATE, dontcha know.

I aspire to eccentricity with the grandchildren because I owe it to them. They need it. The grandchildren, especially the grandsons, are surrounded with plenty of safe, soft men who bend forward at the waist or squat down to talk to them, speaking in high, sing-songy voices and actling more like spinster aunts than men. I want to be very clear here — I am not in any way referring to their fathers, who happen to be our sons. I am referring to the men they encounter in their daily lives. Teachers, preachers, clerks, administrators, functionaries, bureaucrats, policemen, firemen, coaches, tutors, doctors, drivers, newscasters, fast-food countermen…all of these. All of these present the bland, benign, predictable, neuter, apologetic, safe and tamed male of the 21st century. And in the eyes of the parents, there is no room whatsoever for the loveable eccentric. What poverty. What deprivation. To be kept from the company of older men who simply let their tongues or their actions slip the leash every once in a while…it’s tragic. The spiritual malnourishment of today’s child. I firmly believe that every male child needs to hear his grandfather, at least once in his life, threaten to kick the living dogshit out of some mouthy or inconsiderate boor who has shown disrespect to the grandfather and/or child. And the grandfather had better be prepared to either kick said dogshit out of the other fellow or be willing to have it kicked out of him. Children pay attention. They notice when someone sticks to their guns, even if the adult comes out worse for the encounter.

When I was a young man, I did a pretty respectable job of cementing myself as an eccentrique deluxe in the eyes of my nephews. I talked to them like I talked to my Marine buddies. I threatened them. I slapped them around. I invented creative tortures for them when they disobeyed or displeased me.

And to this day, they hate the sight of me.

But …they tell the most marvelous stories of their uncle SK. There’s the eternal payoff. I’d much rather have someone tell raucous, laughter-choked stories about me at my mother’s funeral than to see me as a Nice Man. Saints preserve me from being a nice, safe man.

I aspire to eccentricity. Especially with the grandchildren. At the end of days, we’ll see how it all worked out.

~ S.K. Orr