In which the Hero's innocence is exaggerated

Family gatherings, even the most enjoyable, can be fraught with interpersonal dangers and must be negotiated carefully. Saying the wrong word, for example, may trigger a story from a parent or grandparent or uncle, a story that everyone -- distant relatives, the family cat, the neighbor's cat, strangers who have gotten lost in the neighborhood and stopped to ask directions -- has heard numerous times and will go to great lengths to avoid hearing again.


During our recent visit to my parents', we were fortunate to avoid any repeat stories until one night at dinner. Something reminded my father of the story of the milkman, an event that happened before I was born, and he must have thought there was a slim chance that the Hero, at least, had not heard it before. Being relatively new in the family, the Hero is considered a rapt audience for family stories.


"Have you heard the story about the redheaded milkman?" he asked the Hero.


"Say yes," I whispered urgently.


"Yes," the Hero said promptly.


"Thank goodness for that," my mother mumbled, wiping her brow.


My father was clearly disappointed but said no more. Such a tactic does not always work with him, as he is ever ready to suspect a conspiracy, but he is convinced that the Hero is more polite than the rest of us and would never deny my father a story unless he truly had already heard it.


The Hero can, in fact, get away with quite a bit around my father, who has always been outnumbered by women, as he often laments, and who needs the Hero to be on his side to "even things up." Therefore the Hero's trespasses -- which admittedly are few -- are conveniently overlooked. He never gets in trouble for anything like the rest of us do, including my mother.


The four of us were watching a movie one evening, a movie that my mother, the Hero, and I had never seen, and that my father had seen but had forgotten he had seen it. Toward the end he suddenly realized that it was familiar, and proceeded to announce each action just before it occurred on screen: 


"Now she's going to get the bad news. Yep, here comes her secretary to get her out of her meeting."


"There she goes to answer the phone call."


"They're gonna tell her he's dead."


After about five of these announcements, the rest of us, including the Hero, shushed my father loudly. A firm believer in pouting, he refused to talk to any of us for some time, and when we later met up with my brother (another individual my father considers to be "on his side") and sister-in-law, my father told on us.


"The girls shushed me during a movie," he said.


My mother and I looked at each other. The girls shushed him?


Someday she and I will make ourselves scarce while my father and the Hero are enjoying some bonding time, but before we do we will casually say to my father, "You know, I don't think he's ever heard about the redheaded milkman..."