Adventures of the Wednesday Night Bored Meeting

Warning: colorful language ahead. Proceed at your own risk.

The older I get, the more I like my parents. I’ve always loved them, but I really like them, too. In my 20s, a visit home meant a chance to catch up with friends. These days, I enjoy hangin’ with my family just as much.

My dad has been retired for a few years now, but he still keeps in touch with his old work buddies. Not so much by phone; he’s not the chatty type. Definitely not by e-mail; he’d kick your butt just for suggesting that he sit in front of a computer and peck out a note to someone. No, my dad and his friends keep in touch in a reasonably formal way. It’s called the Wednesday Night Board Meeting.

I have to admit that the first time I happened to be in town on a Wednesday night, I prepared myself for a Wednesday Night Bored Meeting. Let me assure you, these are anything but.

First of all, I’m privileged to even attend the occasional WNBM when I’m in town. Typically, this is a men-only event, but I’m allowed for some reason that’s got to do with my foul mouth and catchy comebacks.

Secondly, I learn things about my dad and his buddies that I wasn’t privy to as a child. The guys love to tell stories on each other. And let me just say right now that they already know I write on a blog, so it should be understood that anything they say within earshot of me is fair game. Nonetheless, I will change some names to protect the guilty where necessary.

Also, it is worth mentioning that southern accents make these stories soooo much better, so audio would be great here. However, I’ll spell phonetically so the Yankee readers will get the point.

At a recent WNBM, Daddy called out a friend, Arty*, for his recent social faux pas while at a NASCAR event (please tell me you didn’t expect me to share a redneck story that didn’t include a NASCAR angle).

Daddy asks what might have been an innocent question by anyone else: “Arty, do you need some Depends?”

Immediately, Arty gets a sheepish look on his face.

“Alright, I’ll admit it. I sharted,” he says.

I’m wondering what the heck a “shart” is, but in this group, it doesn’t take long for all to be revealed.

Arty and some friends went to a race in Daytona. Shortly after nearly getting into a fight with a drunk man, Arty sat by his girlfriend, gazed romantically into her eyes, hiked up one butt cheek and attempted to fart, “just to be cute,” he says.

I say attempted, because that’s not quite what happened. He crapped in his pants. Classy.

So Arty quickly earned himself a new nickname: Arty Sharty.

A couple of weeks later, I was in town again on a Wednesday night. I’ll admit I was excited. I wondered who might top the Arty Sharty story that week.

On this night, a legendary story about my dad beating the crap out of an uncle-by-marriage came up. This is an oldy-but-goody, and it is so much funnier when Daddy’s redneck friend who witnessed said butt-kicking tells it. I suspect he embellishes, but hey, I never let the facts get in the way of a good story, either.

Mike* says he was in the truck with my dad the afternoon they went to my aunt and uncle’s house so Daddy could have a conversation with his brother-in-law on how his sister should be cared for and treated appropriately.

I’ll set the scene: Daddy and Mike are in a 1974 Dodge Power Wagon 4×4. They enter the trailer park (Yeah, a trailer park is in this redneck story. Shocker.) and drive over the aunt’s/uncle’s hedge and stop in the front yard, just outside the front door. I suspect beer was involved at some earlier point.

This is how Mike describes what happened next: Uncle comes barreling out front door shouting, “Hey, you can’t drive over my hedge and up in my yard like th…”

BAAAAWOOOP!

That’s the sound of Daddy doing an open-handed slap across the uncle’s face. And the uncle doing a cartwheel as he hits the ground.

“I thought he was doin’ sum gymnastics,” Mike says of the uncle. “Yer daddy beat the hell outta ‘im.”

Then Daddy corrects, “No I didn’t. I slapped ‘im one time.”

“What about when you kicked ‘im in the hangy-downs as he tried to crawl under the trailer?” Mike asks.

Daddy denies that happened. Meanwhile, I’m doubled over with laughter at the term “hangy-downs.”

Perhaps I should be disturbed that I didn’t have to ask what he meant by that. If ever I write a book, I have to find a way to work these stories into it.