Bad Idea: These insolent boys!
May 29, 2013
I should know better by now, but I don’t and that is why I was caught by surprise when I walked into my sitting room Saturday morning to find my sons waiting. These days Chandler and Frasier just emerge, as if right out of the blue.
I should know better by now, but I don't and that is why I was caught by surprise when I walked into my sitting room Saturday morning to find my sons waiting. These days Chandler and Frasier just emerge, as if right out of the blue.
They are like the rain. I was going to ask Uganda's most futile question, which is, "What are you two doing here?" but they know better than to let me get the first word in.
The moment they saw me stagger in with my toothbrush sticking out of my mouth they began their broken-voiced barrage of questions.
Chandler: Behold, it lives. Ask him.
Frasier: Think he knows?
Chandler: He is an editor at a newspaper. It is his job to know such things.
Frasier: But he might lie to us. You know the press of these days can't be trusted.
Self: What is goi…
Chandler: Dad, what is "Insolent"?
Self: (I like the chance to show off in front of the boys) At the least appropriate times, you are.
Chandler: Okay, but what does it mean?
Self: I know what it means to bear the brunt of it all month long when insolent kids come back for holidays. I know what it means to be free of it when you are at your school or at your mother's.
But as for what it means to actually occupy that state, to actually be insolent, I cannot say I know. For that you need to do as Whitney Houston taught us: Look inside your soul.
Frasier: Whitney said what?
Self: You know. She said, "Sometimes you laugh, sometimes you cry. Life never tells us the whens or whys." In some part of that song with its cheap, shallow, safi-and-rolex wisdom she says if you want the answer you should look inside yourself.
Chandler: Who is Whitney Houston?
Frasier: This must be your journalism training at work. You the press, you never give the public the information it needs.
Self: In general that might be true, but in this specific case it is mitigated by the fact that I, the press, am ready to give the public the dictionary it needs.
Frasier: What? That thing with paper? Eugh. How medieval. Can't we at least get iphones with a dictionary app?
Self: The other day at work a colleague asked me where he can go to buy an Android. I told him they don't mass manufacture them for the market yet. Then I smugly added that if it was an Android phone he wanted, or a smartphone that runs on the Android operating system I could advise him on where they were sold.
Frasier: You must have enjoyed doing that.
Self: Few pleasures exceed it.
Chandler: That was kind of insolent of you…
Self: Come to think of it, it was.
Frasier: But if you know where to get Android phones, why haven't you hooked us up with a pair?
Self: Because those phones are sold at high prices and neither of you is ready to give me the loan I will need to get one. Chandler, swing me kko sh1.4m so I can buy an android phone for Frasier.
Chandler: I would love to but my pockets are insolent.
I don't think he knew the meaning of the word, but he just used it anyway because it felt right. He will make a good journalist one day.
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