My mother didn’t allow my siblings and me to chew gum as children, so I never developed any affection for gum chewing later in life. Still, for all of my life, I have tried to blow a bubble with gum to no effect.
Then Charlie walks up to me before a baseball game last week, and midsentence, he blew a bubble. Casually. Like blowing a bubble was as ordinary as walking or breathing or leaving a pair of his damn shoes behind in every room of the house.
“How did you do that?: I asked. “Where do you learn to do that? Where did you get that gum?”
The gum came from a friend. He figured out how to blow a bubble on his own. He explained the process for blowing a bubble in the same way everyone prior to him has tried to explain it to me.
In other words, he wasn’t any help.
I should be proud of my son to have figured out something that has stymied me for all of my life.
I was not proud. Only annoyed.
How dare he betray me like this.
Flaunt a skill that I do not possess.
Look so effortless and cool while doing so.
It’s petty and stupid for me to be annoyed.
Still, I’m annoyed.
