family

Shopping for liquor with the kids

“Sweetie, please stop scampering among the bottles.”

“Settle down in here, you two. I only want to buy one bottle. Intact.”

“Sorry, sweetie, you can’t hold the bottle… I know you won’t drop it… I just don’t think they’d like it… Oh, okay, we can both hold it then.”

“See? You’re not the only children in the liquor store tonight!”

“Let the other little girl press the button; you’ve done it lots of times…” (No way.) “Honey bunny, she wanted to make the doors open. Let’s try to be nice.”

“No, sweetheart, it’s not gin; it’s scotch. We’re buying some cheap scotch for LB.”

I have effectively become a rationalization.

Out of the mouths of babes: the F-bomb

My Fellow Inebriates,

Miss P dropped the F-bomb at the table last night, paralyzing everyone into several seconds of silence.

Not that it should have been a surprise. Not after six years of overhearing our mother’s losing struggle to rein in blue language. With suburban predictability, however, it did surprise everyone—even four-year-old Miss V, who ceased chattering as the shockwave rocked the table.

I think most adults—even if they cuss occasionally like my parents—fancy themselves pretty much desensitized to the F word, having heard and used it in every context imaginable. But the first time your six-year-old lets it rip, the word erupts across your senses with all the force it had when you first heard it. Maybe more.

Even I, skulking beside the duty-free CAOL ILA 12, was floored.

At six years of age, there’s a reasonable probability of schoolyard exposure to the F word. She may be in Grade One, but P is presumably surrounded by budding miscreants, effing all day long for all we know. But my parents (especially the one laughing uncontrollably) would be disingenuous to claim that P’s primary exposure hadn’t occurred here, at LBHQ.

They did take some reassurance from the context. Even when our parents run their potty mouths, they don’t hurl the F word at one another. It finds its way into exclamations, rhetorical remarks to bad drivers, the odd split infinitive…it gets thrown around omnidirectionally, but it’s never used at anyone. And the way she used it last night…well…they might be able to tell themselves she learned that usage elsewhere.

My friend Scary had been sitting at the far end of the table. He isn’t ordinarily allowed there, but somehow he’d remained invisible until dessert, and he was looking as covetously at the family’s tiramisu as I was looking at Dad’s new whisky. (Okay, I was humping the bottle, but this story’s not about me.) Scary, no longer able to resist, must have sidled a bit closer to the dessert plates and looked accusingly at P. Affronted, she addressed him with chiming clarity:

“Mr. Bear, FUCK OFF.”

It was a moment of failure for our parents. They had failed (1) to shield P from the F word. They had failed (2) to instill its taboo nature. And they had failed (3) to have ready a party line on hard-core swearing from their six-year-old at the table.

Whatever united front their God-fearing neighbors might have pulled together in a situation like this, our parents could not boast one of their own. Dad went quiet (saying afterward he was just hoping the moment would pass), while Mum almost perished with convulsive laughter. Finally she managed: “You mustn’t ever, ever say that at school, okay?”

“I know,” P said, casual as could be.

And that was that.

It wasn’t the first time Scary had elicited a strong reaction. A mangy, apocalyptic, filthy, foraging picnic animal, Scary has difficulty maintaining a low profile. It was a matter of time before someone told him to fuck off.

Perhaps, deep down, my parents saw that—unlike so many bus-station loiterers spilling the F word out both sides of their mouths as verb, noun, adverb, and adjective, punctuating thoughts devoid of significance—P had delivered the F-bomb with impact. Massive impact.

And for that—even if Mum and Dad would never allow themselves to give it to her—she deserved a high-five.

ENGLISH BAY PALE ALE—Good for frogs, bears, and wildlife in general

My Fellow Inebriates,

The kids went to Frog Search today, where they scooped tadpoles and salamanders out of a swampy pond, inspected them under microscopes, sorted them into categories, then sang a song to them as they released them back into the water.

What you lookin’ at?

I asked the frog who lives at LBHQ what he thinks of Frog Search.

He said something unintelligible.

I asked him again.

I think he said ribbit.

The frog who lives here doesn’t have a name. Despite being cuddly and soft he’s not, er, an A-list animal; the kids haven’t bothered naming him, nor do they notice what he’s up to.

Pollywogs who haven’t learned to cuss yet

I asked him again what he thought about dozens of kids plunging empty bowls into his habitat, capturing whatever was unlucky enough to whoosh into the bowls, and then bothering the organisms for several hours before chucking them back.

I thought he said ribbit again but when I queried more closely I realized he’d said motherfuckers. I know, the two words couldn’t be more easily distinguishable, but I was hammered, my fellow inebriates, and for all I know he said antidisestablishmentarianism.

Turns out he did say motherfuckers. He took pains to clarify for me: Goddamn motherfucking nature-walk assholes pluck my tads out of our fucking habitat—what the fuck do you think I think of it, you stupid bear?

So then I felt a little bad. I’d thought maybe it was a bit of an adventure for the ’poles—like the time I woke up with that skull-shaped vodka bottle and drank it all at once.

Did he realize, I asked—the kids sang a song to the tadpoles before tossing them (mostly underhand) into the pond?

The frog told me to go and beat off. (I know, right?! Holy shit, that’s what happens to animals who don’t get loved enough.) So I decided to split a GRANVILLE ISLAND ENGLISH BAY PALE ALE with him. Don’t ask how we managed to get it open; frogs are resourceful enough creatures that they can switch gender; opening a beer must be child’s play.

We used to buy ENGLISH BAY PALE ALE all the time until my mum decided she liked SLEEMAN HONEY BROWN LAGER better. The two beers share similar characteristics; both are highly accessible mass-market-yet-purportedly-micro-style beers that give consumers a bit more than the high-pitched metallic assault of a typical macro brew. They are, if anything, transitional beers that pave the road between craft and macro styles. More expensive, higher quality, but not precious, and not odd. Very mainstream.

I thought the frog would like our beer. It pours a lovely copper-amber on the slightly translucent side, with healthy white foam that dissipates fairly quickly. The aroma is earthy yet toffee-like, following through with a lovely malty, honeyed taste with lingering but mild hoppiness. With moderate carbonation and satisfying mouthfeel, ENGLISH BAY PALE ALE is generous and appealing, although it might not be interesting enough to have a session with. I didn’t want a session and the frog sure didn’t (he said it didn’t taste at all like flies and was therefore just okay). It did make him stop cussing, so it was good for me in two senses.