tavie.com

Happy birthday, Dad!

Mom took Dad and I to the Pierpont Morgan Library dining room for brunch. Good, strong Bloody Maries seem to be a newfound Sunday ritual for me.

A'course, Dad demanded a wheelchair to get around what has got to be the smallest museum in New York, but that was fine. It's his special day. I know his feet hurt. He's a sixty-nine year old diabetic who's suffered numerous mini-strokes, so he can have his wheelchair for the teeny museum if he wants.

Dad latched onto any stranger he could find to lecture at, as usual, but a funny thing happened outside the Rembrandt exhibit. Dad was sitting there in his chair, lecturing in a relatively soft voice as befitted the silent atmosphere of the gallery. He was sitting in his chair in the antechamber and I was in the gallery proper, squinting at the little drawings (Rembrandt suuuuuuuure loved himself, did he not?) and I did notice that his voice was audible from inside the gallery, and that it was the only audible thing besides breathing and shuffling of feet on the floor. It wasn't loud or obnoxious, but I thought that I would make my way out and gently remind Dad that we could all hear him talking.

But then.

This harpy, this nasty old lady in a tacky orange tee shirt, I heard her voice ring out-- shrill and nasty-- in the room. Her companion (husband? brother? friendly stranger?) murmured something and she shrieked, "It's a gallery, not a church! It's a gallery, not a church! If I have to shut up then I want him to shut up!" and she brandished her guidebook towards the doorway through which my Dad was blithely chattering on (to a smiling, nodding captive who seemed, now, less annoyed than his usual victims.)

The guard came over to her and whispered to the woman that she had to keep her voice down and she ranted on and on that she paid to get in like everyone else and she shouldn't be forced to hear lectures from him (pointing again and again at my dad, who hadn't a clue this was going on.) The guard said, "If you're going to be rude, you're going to have to leave." She said she was going to get the manager to have my dad thrown out. The guard repeated, quietly but firmly, that she would not be permitted to be rude and she should keep her voice down or she'd have to leave.

After she was gone, I slunk quietly out the door and whispered to Dad that he was doing nothing wrong, but that his voice was audible in the gallery. The woman he was talking to remarked upon what a kind thing that was for me to do.

I can't convey how satisfying it was that my Dad, my obnoxious, lecturing Dad, was the good guy in this scenario. It was some crazy old bat making a scene for no reason.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 6:48 PM | shower me with attention