Maneuvers and mannerisms

Recently, we visited Jackson Danger (and by extension my daughter and her husband) in Lenexa, Kansas, just outside Kansas City. Pam’s parents from SE Missouri also visited the Kansas City area at the same time. I thought it was nice of them to drive all the way across the state to visit for a day. They are pretty good people, in spite of the fact they drive a hybrid car.

Pam’s mom, Ruth Ann, told a story about how Pam’s dad, Phillip, recently saved a person’s life. Now, while she was telling this story I was a bit distracted – Jackson needed my advice about something and I was engaged with him – so I may not have the story exactly right and may have gotten some of the facts wrong, but here is the jest of what I gathered:

Apparently, Phillip and Ruth Ann were visiting with some friends and one of them started choking on some food. Ruth Ann related how Phillip was able to clear the friend’s breathing passage and in the process said something about hugging men and Phillip’s friend complaining about a resulting sore throat.

Half hearing the story, I got a bit confused, and at this point I began to pay a bit more attention to what she was saying because this just didn’t sound quite right. And when she mentioned something called the “hind lick maneuver”, my radar became fully active. And when my son-in-law agreed with Phillip that “you must be gentle when doing this maneuver,” I doubled my efforts to understand what was being said.

Now, people in SE Missouri are pretty conservative, and pretty much keep private aspects of their lives to themselves, especially when it comes to “personal” activities, so I was naturally surprised that Ruth Ann would openly tell us about this kind of thing. And Ruth Ann was so nonchalant about it, making me think that this was something they engaged in regularly. It almost made me blush – almost. After all, I am an adult, I’ve traveled around the world some, I’m a “been there, done that” kind of guy, but there was just something wrong with hearing my in-laws talk about this kind of stuff, especially in front of little Jackson Danger.

I was just about to protest when I realized that we did live in a progressive world and thought better about correcting my in-laws (they drive a hybrid car, after all). They too are adults and are entitled to their personal lifestyles. Who am I to judge? So, I decided to participate in the conversation and started describing similar things that occurred around the Naval Bases in the Philippines, and went into some details about some of those activities.

Well, everyone in the room suddenly became quiet and just stared at me. Phillip excused himself to get another cup of coffee, and Ruth Ann excused herself to “powder her nose”. Pam gave me a somewhat disgusted dirty look, while Robbie just sat there and kind of snickered behind his hand. I knew something was wrong, but didn’t realize just how TERRIBLY wrong until Catie, my daughter, glared at me with distasteful incredulity. Now, Catie often glares at me with distasteful incredulity, but this was such a much more intense look of distasteful incredulity that it frightened me into silence right in the middle of my description of the “Filipino Jungle Boy maneuver”.

Seeing that the conversation had kind of dried up for that moment, and not being quite sure what had happened, I thought it best to sit quietly for the remainder of the day.

Honestly, sometimes I wonder why my family doesn’t like it when I join in their adult conversations.