I’ve never seen anything like it: Dale jogs with his arms by his sides, not unlike an Irish step dancer. So, as much as I enjoy spending time with him otherwise, the time came when I had to tell him that our jogging relationship was over. I don’t think I’m being frivolously judgmental in severing a doomed partnership because Dale won’t assume the appropriate jogging form. Whether or not my decision is a good one is immaterial–every innate instinct tells me this is the right decision. There’s a right way to jog and there’s a wrong way to jog. If Dale isn’t interested in investing the effort required to put up his jogging dukes, who is he fooling?

“You’re not kidding?” he asked after I’d made my announcement. “What’s the deal?”

I shrugged. “I told you why, and I’m sorry, but… it’s just not right for me, the way you jog. It’s just wrong.”

Dale stood stock still, his head cocked to the side as if that might make it easier for my words to penetrate. Then, “So… it’s about vanity? I don’t get it. Assuming I’m not moving my arms the right way, you’re worried that people will think we’re… what, deviants?”

“It’s not vanity at all. The way you run is conspicuous the same way that someone chewing without removing the fork from their mouth would be conspicuous. Naturally, it draws the attention of onlookers, and, frankly, I’d rather not be noticed like that. That’s not vanity.”

“But your base concern is superficial, isn’t it?”

“This isn’t about wearing the wrong color shorts or not having the coolest haircut,” I said.

“No, I mean, isn’t this like… casting out a friend because they’re knock-kneed?”

I shook my head. “I’m talking about a choice here, an indefensible choice. You and I are no different physically, yet you’re running with your arms pinned to your sides, why? Is it because you’d be flung off balance into a ditch otherwise? No, it’s because that’s how you choose to conduct yourself. I mean, if you smoked a pipe while we were jogging, or… if you insisted on wearing a feathered headdress, then I’d have to take the same considerations, wouldn’t I?”

“But where do you draw the line?”

“Well, here is one place where I draw the line,” I said. “The line is drawn.”

Determining interpersonal relationships based upon unreasonable criteria is a recipe for a solitary existence. I know that. I merely expect a modicum of social propriety. This is a long-standing principle of mine, and it’s always stood me in good stead.

I was only 10 when our father moved to a new house in the suburbs, and my younger brother and I took the opportunity to creature around the neighborhood to get the lay of the land. Before long we were approached by a boy around my age who invited us into his home to see his dad’s piranha–a promising start to a provisional friendship.

After some friendly chat the three of us headed back out into the summer heat so the boy could show us his favorite spots, including an impressive rope swing over a deep creek, and a nicely-appointed fort in the crook of a dead tree. “Do you guys climb?” the boy asked. My brother and I glanced at each other, then shook our heads. “Trees,” he clarified, indicating the branches above. “I climb all the time. I never wear shoes.”

Indeed, the soles of his feet were like dried leather. As he scaled the tree the bark stripped away to reveal spiky pulp, but his feet were so tough that the splinters bent back like dry grass. I winced with amazement: my own tender feet would have been instantly impaled.

My brother and I craned our heads back to follow the boy’s progress, and that’s when things took an unfortunate turn. Like a wee baby gerbil emerging from its bed of cedar, a single pink testicle greeted us both from the boy’s red shorts. To my horror I found myself unable to turn away for a moment, standing agape as the boy’s vertical thrusts all but assured the wayward scrotum’s imminent and glorious freedom. The boy’s utter obliviousness to this anatomical travesty only made it that much worse.

When I looked over at my brother he was already looking back at me, and there was suddenly no need for communication. A primal need for survival had kicked in and we were of a single mind. When we turned to leave it was perfunctory, the way you leave the theatre when the curtain slides closed and the lights come up.

“Hey! Guys?” The boy was fifteen feet from the ground, and straddling the trunk of the tree like a koala. I turned around without breaking from our retreat. “Where are you going? You wanna do something else?”

“No, that’s okay,” I said, realizing only then that we would never know the boy’s name. “We have another thing we have to go to now, so, we’re gonna-”

“Okay, I’ll see you next time, okay?”

You have to draw the line somewhere though. Even a child knows that.

I went with L. to check out the new neighborhood café. Ten minutes later our clever banter had reached a natural pause over antipasti, and I took advantage of the fermata to enjoy the bistro’s ambience of carefully-orchestrated comfort. Candles glowed, glasses tinked, and tendrils of conversation wafted over from satellite tables. Lapses in conversation are inevitable, like rests in music. And, inasmuch as they afford one the opportunity to listen, I welcome the lapses. When they come, the other senses can reach outward to compensate, and it’s important not to overlook these moments as opportunities for future conversation.

However, there are certain risks involved with even the most harmless of pursuits, as my experience with my partner this evening perfectly illustrates. The group of four adjacent to us was a spirited lot, and I found myself following their conversational thread for a few minutes before something the eldest woman said caught my attention. She said, “Well she didn’t know his father was a cop, you know, so when she saw his motorcycle…”

That brief snippet of dialogue conjured up a memory of my own, so I wasted no time. “L., I told you my father was a cop?”

She sipped her wine, then nodded. “You’d mentioned it, yes.”

“I was just thinking about the time my first childhood girlfriend visited our house. I guess I’d never mentioned the fact that my dad was a cop, so when she saw all the guns lying on the table one day, she assumed-”

I stopped short just then, the way you do when you see four people glaring at you from the adjacent table.

L. caught my gaze and looked over her shoulder, then straightened in surprise as she received the full brunt of their collective scorn. I spread my hands and mouthed “What?”

“Like you don’t know,” said the patriarch, in an impressive show of suburban bistro chivalry, and then turned back to his clan.

I most certainly didn’t know; not exactly. Did they think I was mocking them because our stories both featured father cops? Or perhaps they considered the subject of father cops reserved until they left the premises. How presumptive! But still better than the third alternative, which was that there was some arcane statute of limitations concerning any topic broached by those in one’s proximity.

What a hellish world of accounting that would be, and I for one refuse to subject myself to such esoteric mores. That’s a choice one makes. If anything, they should have been flattered that I found inspiration in something they had been discussing. But to take offense? It’s not like I got up and danced around their table singing the chantey of the father cop.

Oh…
my…
daddy was a COPPER [a kick to their table leg]
who suprised my GIRL [kick]
when she spied his CHOPPER [kick]
with blue lights a-TWIRL! [kick]
Twirl twirl twirl twirl
sound your siren and storm your TROOPS [kick]
twirl twirl twirl twirl
you can spy her knickers with your shiny BOOTS! [kick]

See, then I might understand their disdain–even welcome it. But in this case… I should have chalked it up to mere oversensitivity, as L. recommended I should. But I was just so unsettled by the episode that further conversation was killed for the time being.

I might have used synonyms to camouflage the thematic similarities. “My elder who was a gendarme…” Or perhaps if I had spoken in another language entirely! That is, unless the bone of their contention was in the theme rather than the specific words I’d used. Who could know? Had anyone ever bothered to codify the etiquette around the use of conversational themes overheard?

As it happened, there would be no convenient resolution to these questions tonight. So instead I sat in uneasy silence as we awaited our entrees. The sounds of the bistro crept back to the fore, and before I knew it I was listening in to the dialogue held by our rival quartet again, helplessly. Once I had become sensitized to their signature timbre, it was difficult not to hear it to the exclusion of nearly everything else.

The younger male was talking about his experience writing a novel, much to the edification of the elders. Now there’s a meaty topic, I thought, biding my time.