COLUMN: Go with the Flow

By Tobin Barnes
I got a Rolex watch for Christmas.

Of course, me, a high school teacher, wearing one of those insanely expensive watches is like Jed Clampett teaching philosophy at Harvard. There’s something wrong with the picture.

Chuck’s son Rob gave it to me. He gave my wife a Rolex, too. To say the least, it seemed an embarrassment of riches.

This all happened when we were at Chuck’s Christmas Day for a gathering of some of my wife’s side of the family.

I’ve talked about Chuck before.

He likes to refer to me as his brother-in-law. I’d rather refer to him as my wife’s sister’s husband. It gives me the mindset to think of this as a pretty distant relationship.

Anyway, Chuck’s a character.

He’s the guy who bought six pink sports jackets because they were a great buy at fifteen bucks apiece. By that token, six squirrel hides at a quarter apiece would be a great buy, too.

He’s also the guy who bought a seven-hundred-dollar art print. He had to show it to me first thing I got there one time. I hadn’t known he was such a committed art lover. The price tag was still on the back...$700, in black ball point. “I added a zero,” he said.
Chuck’s kids don’t have quite the character characteristics he does, thank God.

Children oftentimes bounce off their parents and decide to head in the opposite direction. Nevertheless, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Chuck’s kids can still be Chuck in their own tangential way.

So Rob gave my wife and me our own Rolexes, both in one small black box with little medallions certifying Swiss workmanship and authenticity.

He’d bought them several years ago when he was serving in Iraq with his National Guard unit. He bought nine black boxes of Rolexes at the time, knowing they’d come in handy eventually. I guess a shopper’s got to snap up bargains with the future in mind.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think Rob thinks they’re truly Rolexes, and I don’t either. But who am I to know? It’s not like I can ask him how much he paid for them.

I just go with the flow in Chuck’s house just like Chuck himself does.

Several months ago, my wife and another sister were visiting Chuck’s wife, Joey, for a few days. The two visiting sisters decided to rearrange the living room furniture, perhaps not-too-subtlely implying that Chuck and Joey’s arrangement had been pretty darned inadequate for nigh on thirty-some years, and as visitors, they weren’t going to take it anymore.

So Chuck comes home to find his calm and order surprisingly rearranged and the sisters still at that moment assiduously improving things in other parts of his house. I mean, who amongst your invited guests goes so far as to rearrange your furniture?

Well, Chuck’s wife’s sisters do.

But Chuck evidently went with it because when we got there on Christmas Day, the furniture was still in the same positions as the sisters had moved it. That is, with the exception of his TV lounger. No way, for the sole sake of stylishness, was he going to turn his head and get a crick in his neck just to watch TV.

And, let’s see...what else was going on?

Oh yeah, this other sister I’ve been talking about, Ann, told us she’d recently gotten a Kindle, one of those electronic book readers that have become popular. We’ve had one for about a year now and had highly recommended it to her.

Perhaps you’ll remember that it is Ann who finds the nearness of “Employee-of-the-Month” reserved parking spaces at big-box retailers a fine personal convenience, not to mention a great time saver on her busy shopping trips.

Anyway, Ann says she likes her Kindle so much she takes it to church with her. Because the Kindle comes with a black leather case, even from a short distance it could easily pass for a hymnal or prayer book.

Taking your Kindle to church gives all new meaning to the minister’s oft-heard instruction: “Open your books and let us pray.”