Uncool

His phone chirped. Grateful for the distraction, he took it out and read the text: Rob’s Romps?

He tapped his response quickly: Umm no.

He looked up and caught the flash of annoyance on Alison’s face. “Seriously? You’re negging me? Who was that, your roommate?”

He was genuinely surprised. “Umm, no. It’s…” He hesitated, then came clean. “It’s my father.”

An elegant eyebrow went up.

“He’s, sort of, in a crisis right now.” The sentence ended on a rising note, as if he half meant it as a question.

The eyebrow stayed up.

“He’s asking me for advice.” Same rising note.

She looked at him blankly. His heart sank. He was going to have to explain.

The date was not going well. He had been stunned when Alison tossed him a casual “Sure, why not?” when he asked her out to dinner, and he stayed stunned the whole week waiting for Saturday night. He was a lowly engineering undergrad; she was five years older, a tall, achingly pretty, stylish, singularly focused woman working on her Masters in History. She was so frickin’ smart it shook him. He had no idea why she hadn’t excused herself and bailed by now, so paltry had been their conversation thus far, all biographical stuff.

“He’s… found Facebook. He’s…” He sighed. “He’s uploading photos and he wants a ‘cool’ title for the photo album. He’s been shooting me every silly name he can think of.”

His phone chirped again: My Shenanigans?

He smiled. “Thing is, my Dad’s pretty much the uncoolest guy you’ll ever meet. I mean, he thinks breakfast is cool. When I was a kid, I’d walk into the kitchen and he’d give me this goofy grin and say, ‘Hey, buddy! Bacon today, isn’t that great?’ And this foray into the world of social networking? He’s got, like, 12 friends, mostly relatives and people at work – those who can figure out how to get online, anyway. And me. But he spends hours. He’s been uploading photos from, like, his bowling league and book club and wild office parties at the clubhouse. Right now he’s fixated on finding a cool name for this album.”

He gave her a quick look, missing her already. He texted: Are you *trying* to sound like a geezer?

He leaned back. Might as well go down in flames. “He actually cried when I was born. They took me to the nursery for shots, and he cried when I started crying. I had an excuse: someone just stuck a needle in my butt. He said that when I started crying, he cringed and had to look away. He couldn’t stand that he had helped bring this person into the world, and in the first hour of his life someone had already caused him pain. And he realized that he would be hurt over and over and over again, and he couldn’t stop it. He promised then that he would do everything in his power to make sure that he – I – would be happy as well.

“He tells that story. A lot.”

She was looking at him steadily. And there it was again: the sensation that even though he was sitting stock still, he was falling forward, into those big blues, drowning in them.

His father settled on “Wacky Times.” Three years later, his father uploaded 847 new photos. The album cover photo was of him and his father flashing identical stupid grins, with Alison and his mother between them, Alison radiant in white. In the comments, she had written: Pops, thanks for giving me the coolest guy in the world.

(October 2011)