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Words, Wit, Weapons
My stepfather Ron, a vain man we never called Dad, used to slay the innocents at the dining room table with his wit and his words.
Thank God, I was already an adult, living out on my own, when my mother fell for this widely-read intellectual, an editor for a Union Labor Bulletin. They’d met in a poetry class, Mom seduced by his magical way with words.
My younger sister still lived at home, a teenager struggling to shed baby fat that was hanging on. She became the target for Ron’s adroit verbiage. If she expressed how wonderful Mom’s prime rib dinner was, for example, Ron might say, “It doesn’t look all that delicious, riding around on your hips,” or some such rejoinder.
I was worried that Ron might stab my new boyfriend with one of his zingers, but took him home for Thanksgiving dinner anyway. What I hadn’t known was that Ron was sensitive about his age, being twenty years older than my mother. Nor had I realized what a good verbal opponent my new boyfriend was.
In response to Ron’s asking what he did for a living, my boyfriend said he was an electrician at the city water treatment plant. Ron threw back some kind of warning not to fall in and get shocked and gave out his devilish laugh. My boyfriend came back with the simple: “Thanks, Dad!”
Who knew that’s all it would take to get Ron to eat his own words.
