Here's The Deal
“Deal, No Deal,” Pop calls it. He’s too cheap to spring for the “or.” When Betty’s with us on the weekends, she’ll watch it with him, but she’d never watch it on her own. So they were watching it this one time, and I happened to be in the kitchen, and there’s like a faux window between the kitchen and the TV room (because the TV room was an addition to the house), and Pop says to Betty, “She’s not wearing any lipstick. I don’t understand that.” Betty doesn’t respond—at least, not verbally. Whether Pop meant the contestant or one of the briefcase models, I didn’t ask. Now, let me be clear, Howie Mandel is very talented—and I get it, work is work and money is money—but this show is truly idiotic. Pop, along with every other dirty old man, enjoys watching it because it’s got money and it’s got models. Big surprise, Pop also watches all the beauty pageants, too. But that’s where Betty draws the line. Whenever Pop tunes into a Miss Whatever pageant, Betty leaves the room. Pop’ll keep watching, though. He’s a retired accountant, but he still likes to “look at figures.” Pretty much every time Big Len from next door drops by, he and Pop sink into Dirty Old Men talk. They don’t care if Betty’s around. Drives me nuts, just a little bit. Betty, though, she’ll just sit there and knit and wait it out. She was raised in a world where women accommodated men. That, and her late hubby might’ve been a mobster. He ran a “linen cleaning service,” supposedly, for a bunch of shady motels up in Minocqua and Woodruff. Maybe they weren’t shady at the time. Either way, before he kicked the bucket back in 1967, he was one of Pop’s best clients. Says Pop, “He was always sick.” Pop had several shady clients. Yesterday, when Betty had breakfast ready, she couldn’t bring herself to interrupt Pop as he dug through the heap of bills and miscellaneous papers on the dining table in the TV room. When I came downstairs and saw this, I all but shouted, “Pop, your oatmeal’s getting cold.” He abandoned his heap, plumped down into his seat on the other side of the table, and picked up his spoon. Betty thanked me. I’d have prepared breakfast for both of them, but as Betty likes to say, half-seriously, or maybe full-seriously (but with a smile), “I’ve got to earn my keep.”
10 April 2007