"Why the mopey demeanor, bud?" He instantly straightened up and and adjusted his dockers. He had begun hanging out with a bunch of different friends this year compared to last year. He had taken to wearing khaki pants to school with heavy metal t-shirts. 99.9% of these shirts are black, but Franklin's was blood red today. The cartoon severed head appeared as if it were bleeding all over the cotton. I suppose that's what the devil holding it intended.
"Nothing. I...nothing, dad."
"Go ahead. I'm here for you and your mother isn't around, so we can have man type conversations with her out of the house." Whatever that might mean.
Franklin or "Fdeath" as his buddies liked to call him hesitated. It was fairly obvious I needed to make a step towards gaining his confidence, so I went with the only thing I refused to do when his mother was around. "Come on, fuhdeath. You can talk to your buddy."
I didn't think a man's eye could roll that far back intentionally. "It's F-Death, dad, but thanks for trying. I'm just a little upset about something from school today."
"What happened, fuh...buddy. You know you can talk to me."
The pause was longer than I expected and I admit I had begun to fantasize about the pot roast Jen had left in the fridge for the kids for dinner. My son's voice shocked me out of my dream of juicy beef over garlic mashed potatoes. The fork was almost to my lips in my dream world before the source of my son's drama came out.
"Cynthia Crantz turned me down for the spring formal. It was embarrassing. All of the guys were standing by and saw it."
"I'm sure it wasn't that embarrassing. Could they hear what she said to you?"
"No, but they saw her dump that day's spaghetti over my head. It's lucky it was my red Braindeath t-shirt day." It was then that I noticed a couple of small, dried strands of pasta still staking claim to the fabric.
"I'm sorry to hear that. People can be cruel in high school when they think it will make them look better in the eyes of their friends. I remember going to the hospital at age 6 because John Fingus thought he would look cool if he jammed a full length blue crayon up my nose. To this day, I swear I know what blue smells like."
" What does that have to do with high school?"
"John was 19 and still a freshman. Some people are a little more desperate for attention than others. Maybe this Cynthia just wanted to feel like she had some edge over you because you have an obvious personality and relatively stable group of friends."
"She always seemed kind of cool. She was one of the few people that didn't mind working with me in bio lab or partnering up with me on English writing projects."
"It's not always easy to judge somebody's character at times. Your mother seems to have a knack for looking past all the personality quirks and bad decisions and see the actual person. How else would she have allowed herself to fall for me?" I realize now it is never good to ask questions you are not prepared to elaborate on in a conversation. This was one of them.
"What do you mean?" I had managed to gain his trust in talking about his awkward attempt at love. Lying may have made me look better in hindsight, but I really didn't want to lose his trust.
"I already told you how we met at a train station in Chicago, right?" Franklin nodded. "Well, it may not have been as simple as a chance encounter."
"So you managed to plan out a way to meet her?"
"No. This was definitely chance and most definitely not planned. I had broken up with Michelle who is now married to your Uncle Jake. Jake was my best friend at the time and we are still close, but it's always a bit strange to see a friend so happy with a woman that, at one time, tore you apart when she didn't want to be with you anymore." His eyes kept staring intently at me. I wasn't going to shake him by stalling with the details.
"Well, I had been alone for months and finally had begun to think about dating again. I thought I was ready when one day I saw a gorgeous woman already seated on the train from downtown. I had never seen her before but, as I stood next to her seat, we began to make subtle eye contact. It happens on occasion that you can see in someone's eyes how sweet and good of a person they are and begin to feel confident that they would never hurt you." Franklin nodded again as if he understood.
"We kept looking away embarrassed by the eye contact off and on until I reached my stop. I hadn't managed to say a word to her and had no guarantees that I would see her again, so I had to make a tough decision that affected the remainder of my life."
Franklin nodded as if he knew where this was going. "So you skipped your stop a kept riding with her, finally talking to her and asking her out, right? I'm sure I've heard this story before."
"Not exactly, son. You are half right. I did miss my stop and I continued standing next to her as people left. Seats began to open up and I was getting farther and farther away from my stop. I was frozen and couldn't bring myself to speak to her in front of everyone so...uhh I kind of forced the situation a bit." I knew he was still watching me, but I was never very proud of my tactics and never wanted to tell me son about them. When I looked at him again, he was still staring at me expectantly.
"One part of the story I didn't tell you was that this woman was sitting in her seat so she wouldn't have to stand and manage the large HP printer box next to her on the ground. I don't know why I decided she might think it was romantic, but I grabbed the box at the next stop and ran out onto the platform. Like I expected, she came out after me, but I didn't expect she would have pepper spray or begin beating me with her shoe. I ran out of the train with the box and stood waiting for her for about 15 seconds before I recall her standing at the door of the train already spraying me. The next moment I was curled in a ball while she kicked me and started pummelling me with her shoe while I screamed that I had just wanted a reason to talk to her."
"The train stayed in the station while she beat on me as the conductor and the passengers cheered her on with criminal intent as far as I could tell. That's when your mother showed up. By chance, I had run off at her stop and she had come up in time to find the woman winding up for a kick that may have prevented us from ever having this conversation."
"What happened?" Franklin was trying not to smile. He really wanted to stay upset about that girl today, but I was making it difficult.
"Your mother tackled her. I saw a foot coming towards me and then I saw your mother ling on top of the woman. That's about the time CTA security came in and separated them. I was escorted out of the station and tended to for my eyes from the pepper spray. Your mother and I talked while she waited for me to be able to get my sight back enough to read street signs and walk home. She seemed endeared by my sad attempt at flirting and gave me her number. And that's how we met." He had a strange look on his face, but he definitely wasn't upset anymore.
"If it's alright with you, Dad, I think I'll wait for Mom to get back for advice on dating. I'm too young for a criminal record."
Dating tips from Dad: Do whatever it takes to meet her, just leave enough gap between your scheduled date and time of meeting to allow for time to pull together bail.
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