A MEAN DAD’S DAY CELEBRATION

It was the great cookout.  Neighbors gathered to celebrate their block’s new dad and the old-timers in attendance mouthed off like they knew it all .

ALL FOR THE NEW DAD?

The barbecue that was cooked on the fancy new grill, Mr. Montgomery, the host, had received from his bunch of kids, was lip-smacking good.

Mr. New Dad was still in a daze (from missing much sleep the night before) when he arrived with his girlfriend, the baby’s momma, who was holding their infant in her arms.

“Whoa,” said the elder dad at the gathering. “It’s Father’s Day and you, Mr. New Dad, belong holding that baby.”

“Hold on,” said Montgomery, with a bowl of barbecue sauce in hand and wearing a grimy white apron, “Don’t start this day with a lecture.”

Montgomery went on to add there was no formula for who holds the baby and that there’s no day designated for dads or moms to take their turn.

And so went the conversations at the gathering. The old-timers had words of advice and the older-timers determined that their age gave them enough swag to pronounce what was right and what was wrong with a warning to Mr. New Dad that he best “listen up.”

Soon, both the recipe for the lip-smacking barbecue sauce and the top sports stories of the day gave way to schooling the unsuspecting Mr. New Dad.

THE WOMEN GUESTS CHOSE TO PUNISH MR. NEW DAD’S GIRLFRIEND

Ms. Girlfriend also suffered during the alleged celebration. Afterward she said that her first thought was that the food made her stomach upset, but then she soon realized her ailment was due to the grueling conversation the women neighbors engaged in.

“Back in the day” seemed to have been the theme at the tables where the women were gathered and they weren’t gathered there six feet apart.

Women, decent women, they agreed didn’t show off a baby who was born out of wedlock. One of the women remembered the high school senior who mysteriously disappeared from her neighborhood and was said, according to her  family members, to have gone East to stay with an aunt.

But the people in the neighborhood knew what the real story was and they’d busied themselves in a lot of hush-hush conversation. What ever happened to the girl’s baby? Nobody really cared since the pregnant girl’s family name was still allowed to be honorable.

Men, decent men, it was said, married a girl they impregnated. Hoops and hollers were enjoyed by the women as they remarked how most marriages produced premature babies allegedly born in seven months rather than the full-term nine months.

Ms. Montgomery, wife of the host, offered up the explanation that when the first menstrual period was missed the alarm went out, and by the second month of no period, wedding bells were ringing.

Ms. Girlfriend said she was too uncomfortable to ask any one of the women how many of them fit the wedding bells scenario.

There were many kids, grandkids and great-grandkids at this neighborhood Father’s Day celebration and, fortunately, they seemed untouched by the flow of conversation being offered up.

Ms. Girlfriend admitted she would have preferred to have played with the kids who were oblivious to the gossip and advice that probably had a lot to do with their  birth circumstances.

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO MR. MONTGOMERY’S CAUTION AGAINST LECTURES?

Mr. New Dad was subjected to various views on what the perfect father would do in a series of everyday situations.

“When your kid gets bullied, you teach him to fight back with his fist or any other object that’ll knock the other kid on his heels.”

“Your boy is really the little you. Teach him walk in your shoes!

“Don’t let him be a momma’s boy. You be the boss and that’s why you, and not her, should be carrying that baby today.”

The other young dads attending the celebration didn’t embark on the “back-in-the-day” journey. Instead, they tried hard to hang on to a conversation about sports. But it didn’t work that way. The elders were in charge of not just dishing up the barbecue but also dishing out the conversation.

To sum it up, Mr. New Dad felt as much an outsider as did his girlfriend.

Why humiliate the new parents? Claiming the event was a Father’s Day celebration in honor of the new dad on the block was a wicked plot engineered by a bunch of out-of-sync-with-the times neighbors.

Is a dad who isn’t married to his child’s mother any less of a dad?  Is honoring fathers predicated upon marital status?

While Mr Montgomery served up some great lip-smacking barbecue on his new grill while wearing his greasy white apron, he wasn’t bothering to wear that all important face mask. His guest didn’t seem to care about this as evidenced by their own lack of masks or social distancing as they sat around the patio or chit chatted on the luscious well-kept green lawn.

Maybe the neighborhood folk should have explored ways to celebrate Father’s Day during a pandemic rather than clouding their celebration with unpleasant criticism and hurtful gossip.

Mr New Dad said he and his girlfriend actually had mask with them but didn’t want to be thought of as strange so they didn’t put them on when arriving at the event that was in his honor.

I like old people, after all, I’m one of them. But somebody needs to pull Mr Montgomery’s apron strings and remind him and his friends that the death list for the pandemic puts them at the top of the at-risk list.