Scapegoating

It’s been great having our 23-year-old son home for the holidays. His 15-year-old sister, his Nana and, of course, his mom have been elated.

I love having our family reunited, which is the highlight of my year. We practically do everything together, whether it is roaming around the city, eating out or just staying at home.

Everyone seems to fall back into their comfortable old habits, the main one being to make fun of Dad.

On the weekend before he left to go back to the Mainland, our son, his sister and mother were gathered on the living room couch watching some kind of talk show on television. I was in an adjacent room and could somewhat make out what they were talking about.

Unbeknownst to me, the show they were watching was discussing “manscaping.”

In case you don’t know, that is a pop culture term for male personal grooming below the belt.

Anyway, I could hear them laughing and I thought the subject was about landscaping. Wanting to be in on the family discussion, I decided to share recent experiences of my own hard work, working on our yard – landscaping.

I burst into the room and said, “Hey, I just got finished doing that myself. I raked up all the rubbish and manicured the edges of the front area.”

The three of them looked at me and then burst into uncontrollable laughter.

Puzzled, I continued, “And I trimmed the bush around the mailbox.”

My son and my wife fell into each other’s arms hysterical.

My daughter looked at me with her jaw dropped and said, “That’s disgusting!”

When I finally realized the subject was manscaping, I slinked out of the room.

Good thing, because I was just about to brag about what a good job I did with the weed wacker.