Thursday 15 May 2008

Trip to America Day 7: Holiday Inn and Conversations with Bob...

Today, I left my dorm rooms. I felt sad - I was leaving the metal casket, the exposed toilet, the tan coloured blanket and moving to the land of pillows (Holiday Inn). I decided that at the hotel I would spend the day watching terrible movies with the air conditioning on high (perhaps I'll adopt two monkeys...). After the second movie - a truly dire Resident Evil sequel, I decided to see what the bar was like.

Sitting at the bar - (that way I could be nearer to the Beer) I stared hypnotized at a huge TV screen as commentators talked about whether the Colts etc were ready for their game or something... A guy sat down next to me and I thought hell I'll try and initiate a conversation with him. It was however too early - he simply grunted and spoke in monosyllabic utterances at first.

However, after he'd finished the first drink, he left for the toilet and coming back offered me some popcorn. I knew that I was now an accepted fellow guy. He also began to open up as he drunk more (he had a whisky with each beer). He was called Bob; he had worked in the Special Forces; in his words 'I blew things up'. He was an interventionist at heart 'We should invade Iran for the Oil, heck why not invade Brazil'... He had two sons; Jake (11) and Max (3) - and a wife: 'She does a great job with the kids, what would we do without women hey' - and lived on Rhode Island (NY) 'Too many taxes - and we get nothing for it'. Although, we did not have much in common I started to like Bob - he had a lot of charisma and as we talked I learnt more about his family.

Bob was having problems with his eldest son Jake. While Max could shoot a ball at 30mph at 3 (probably more than I can now...), and was an active go-getter who didn't take any shit 'He punched a boy at his nursery, but I said to the principal, what did the other boy do? Try and take his toy?’ 'He's gonna be like me' Bob said.

Jake on the other hand was a bit of a disappointment; he was a computer geek and stayed up in his room playing war games all day... I tried to make Bob feel better by saying 'Well at least they're WAR games' - but Bob was having none of it 'He doesn't know what it's like to be in War - people can die...’ We drank some more. I learned that Bob had lived in China for three years 'We only had to pay our assistant $10 a week!’ and that he had quite a few hobbies - he still blew up tree trunks in his backyard and in the basement he practiced shooting.

I don't want to give the wrong impression - Bob did sound like an attentive father - taking his kids out to Renaissance fairs, to baseball games and he taught them how to make computers. But we kept returning to Jake 'He used to be good at baseball but his feet are too big now' and 'He has a lot of emotions, more than I do'. As a geek myself, I tried to support Jake and told Bob that sometimes kids just aren't like their parents - Bob agreed... However, Jake wasn't the kind of geek I had been as a young'un. 'He wants to be a sniper when he's older, but I keep telling him that it's different from a computer game, you don't get to reboot', Bob said. I didn't really know how to respond, but somewhere in my brain I thought the following was good advice. 'Well perhaps you should show him a dead body...' Bob eyes glowed, and in the next few minutes he kept thanking me for my "Great idea"... As he said, 'I have a few friends in the Police Force, I can show him what happens to someone's head when a shotgun has a go at it'... He REALLY LIKED my idea... Anyway, I left after a few more drinks feeling a little guilty that I had contributed to the loss of innocence in a young boy... Let's hope Bob forgot that part of the conversation...

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