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buffoonery, college, douchebaggery, I am an ass, jackassery, loutishness, shameful behavior, Tardsie's True-Ass Tales, why am I so loutish?
By Tardsie
Ever wonder just how a gentleman should never act? I nailed it one time.
Profiles in Loutishness
03 Tuesday Mar 2015
Posted in Stupidity, True-Ass Tales
Promethean Times 
Great story!
Brings to mind an embarrassing moment (granted a lot less than yours) also at university. We were sitting at our pizza/beer hangout talking, and I was with a German friend of mind and we were talking about accents. I started ragging on and on about New Jersey accents until the family at the next table let it be known where they were from. Yes, New Jersey.
Oof! Less embarrassing, perhaps, but altogether more dangerous. You’re lucky mom & dad didn’t hold you down as Junior & Sis whacked you with tire irons while murdering the English language (youse was asking for it after all).
And I have to think that a pizza/beer joint is hardly the best place to avoid Garden Staters. You’ll be safe at the Tofu Hut!
Smak, you’re probably lucky that the Dad didn’t punch you in the throat. I was just going to make a comment about what if that comes back around? But at the very end of your talking post, I heard you say you’re glad you have boy children.
We all did silly things when we were younger. So, I’ll cut you some slack and since I’m not a hater, I won’t begrudge you for your youthful folly. Now, if you’d told me this happened last year, the throat punching thing would be most affective, I think.
Not that I’m a violent person.
And I meant effective. I think. Yes, that’s it.
Well, a punch to the throat certainly would be affecting, but it would have just made a mess for everyone. As wrong as I was (and I knew it even then; I was profoundly sorry), I wouldn’t just let myself be attacked, and that would have compounded my sins. He was older then than I am now, almost a foot shorter than I am, and probably at least seventy pounds lighter.
But no, this didn’t happen last year, but rather a lifetime ago. I wish I had acted differently, but having acted the way I did, I carry the memory around with me. I hope that I can teach my boys to be a better man than I sometimes was.
I understand. You do know I was kidding, right? I should have put more smiley things around my words. 🙂
Ah, yes, timing is everything. I once called a girl I knew in high school. When the phone got picked up on her end, I asked her, jokingly of course, if she’d marry me. My buddies in the room with me thought it was the funniest thing, and fell about the place laughing their butts off. Only, it wasn’t the girl I intended to speak to who answered the phone. It was her mother. After I asked her to marry me, she responded, “Well, honey, I’ve already got a husband, and you might be a little too young for me anyway.” Panicked, I quickly hung up the phone. The next day in school, a whole bunch of girls giggled at me behind their hands as I walked down the hall towards my locker. It would be a full decade later until I got up the courage to ask another girl to marry me, and this time, it was face-to-face.
That’s awesome! In high school, I didn’t have the guts to ask a girl out, let alone propose marriage to her old lady! Kudos to Mom for rolling with the gag (even if she threw you off your game!). Sounds like a fun memory!
And it’s smart of you going the face-to-face route. When it comes to marriage proposals, moms are best left out of the process.
My experience has been that mothers-in-law are best left out of just about everything that actually matters to you.
A family blog? Since when?…
That’s a situation there’s just no escape from. All we can do is use it as a learning experience and move on. And in case we forget to behave in a dignified manner in the future, memory has a nice way of reminding us what happens when we don’t.
I agree. I mostly see this memory as funny, and occasionally share the story with friends (including my best friend, the “gentleman who did make her acquaintance, and who assured me it was well worth it.”). But I do try to remember the painful part of it to, because the person who said those awful things in such a public place is not the person I want to be, and not the person that I hope my sons will grow up to be. But I think you know that when I say that I “carry things around with me,” it’s not a morose or self-flagellating kind of thing.
We all have memories that cause us to cringe, especially when we become parents. Oi.
Yeah, that more than anything else has changed my perceptions. I’m amazed at how much I took my mother for granted, and how she was able to make the superhuman look mundane.
I think we all take our moms for granted. Your mom did a good job…
As a teenager without a father and one a boy or two said those things about without consequence, I would say I’m pleased you now realize it and I also know we’ve all done and said stupid things and after these years there are no hard feelings. Life is to learn and we all do if we let ourselves.
Thanks for the comment. You know, the mistakes of the past are something I think about a lot. I don’t mean that in an unhealthy, beat-myself-up way, because I’m a pretty happy dude. As corny as it sounds, I enjoy making people happy or comfortable, I like to make them laugh. I try to remember how very easy it is to hurt people, and how unsatisfying it is.
I may have mentioned this before, but I wonder how many of the bad memories we have, of times when people were cruel to us, are of people who now deeply regret those actions, but for various reasons have never been able to express that to us (either because it’s uncomfortable or because those people are no longer in our lives). I think a lot of the resentment we carry may be unnecessary–the target of our resentment may in fact be profoundly sorry for the things he or she has done.
What a perfect title for a post, Smak! That cringe-inducing incident sounds like one tailor made for a Judd Apatow movie. But of course, in those films, the lout always clods his way into getting the girl. Real life sure has a much less Hollywood ending.
But of course, in those films, the lout always clods his way into getting the girl
Well, to some degree I can appreciate that, because I’ve been a luckier lout than I deserve. A lot of my loutishness, though, wasn’t the result of being a mean guy, but from some real defects in social skills and in my self-esteem. My intention wasn’t to hurt, but rather to be noticed, and to be something–anything–other than what I was. Fortunately, in college, I fell in with a group of dudes who thought I was pretty cool as I was, not as I pretended or tried to be, and that made a world of difference.
These stories are important to me, because they’re patches on the big quilt of my life, but I do sometimes worry that the ones I tend to share paint me out to be a cruel, drunken misanthrope, when in reality I was the beginnings of the person I am today, just really confused and a little bit scared. And with a lot more zits.
Maybe you’re a luckier lout than other louts because you had the intellectual capacity to grow around the time that your skin cleared so you got the girl.