Your Face is Red

My parents came up this past weekend. They wanted to go see a movie at the mall. We had a little time before the movie started so we strolled around. My dad and I following my mom who was walking briskly towards the cutesy, country, nik-nak store. I spent my entire childhood being dragged into stores like that. I've never understood nick-naks. What a complete waste of money. So anyway, my dad and I follow my mom in the store. Right away I start feeling anxious, some left over repression from childhood maybe. My dad loves to talk. He talks and talks, but never really says anything. People like people like that. He starts chit chatting with the woman running the store. I guess my parent go into that store all the time. I can't imagine being a regular at a country boutique.

There they are my dad and this woman, pleasantly stating the obvious, not saying much of anything but really bonding. My mom is looking at cow clocks and imitation Italian renaissance paintings. And I am standing in the middle of the store not knowing what to do.

Suddenly the woman notices me. Now, when I am with my parents I've noticed that I shrink back through the years and become a little boy again as far as the older generation sees it. My dad and the woman start talking about me and staring at me as if I am not there--merely a small talk conversation piece--a nik-nak. It was kind of funny really. She goes on and on and my dad is going on and on. I start to feel really uncomfortable, dizzy even. As if I am Ashton Kutcher's character in The Butterfly Effect. I feel a slight warmth coming over my face. Not a full blush but defiantly a warmth. Then the woman says "awe, he is turning red." Well that warmth is now a fiery furnace and my head is like a torch. I feel like I am in third grade again, when the health teacher was talking about sex. "Oh my, look how red he is," she says. Well at that point all my self respect was completely gone. I just stood there blushing--a twenty five year old man, blushing in the middle of the country nick-nak shop with my dad and some stranger grinning away, agreeing that I was really cute.

This couldn't have just happened. My manhood was completely ripped away and for the rest of the day I walked between my parents, holding their hands, eating ya-ya's (what I used to call raisins.)