What Makes Me Laugh

Hiking with Dan (left) in Yellowstone this year

I knew things weren’t going to go well at dinner when Doug mentioned the French Open and Dan said, “I hate the French.” Sigh. Dan is one of our dearest friends, and we have a standing Friday night ritual of dinner and conversation. It’s just that sometimes the conversation goes down the proverbial drain.

Simply put, up until the last presidential election, Dan voted Republican. He voted for George W. Bush twice. So, it’s remarkable that Doug, who is a staunch liberal, and reads the New Yorker magazine for breakfast, has formed such a close bond with Dan.

Usually sports discussions can get us through the awkward political discussions. But I could tell that Dan’s disagreeable stance on the French Open (he asserted that the U.S. Open was much a much harder tournament) and then his challenge to Doug’s statement that tennis athletes and downhill ski racers are some of the best-conditioned athletes in the world, was making Doug bristle a bit. “So you hate the thing I love, huh?” Doug asked.

Thankfully, we were sitting at the bar, so raised voices didn’t bother anyone. Just me, who was sitting in the middle of the verbal volley, and trying to distract the two with banal observations about whatever floated up on the television screen above the bar. “Oh look, hockey!”

Our food arrived, and this lowered the tenor of conversation to statements like, “Wow, that’s a huge steak” and “this wasn’t what I thought it was going to be.” Anyway, I thought we were through the worst of it until Dan brought George W. Bush into the conversation. That’s when Doug really lost it.

First, Dan mentioned Obama’s Middle East speech. Fine, we could agree on that. Then, he said something about how Bush had given an interview recently and he was really happy not to have to deal with the “terror of the world” on a daily basis anymore. 

Oh boy. Now we are dealing with the word “hate” again, only this time from Doug, and then Dan lecturing Doug about how he shouldn’t hate people. I’m telling you, I kind of wanted to slap them both up the side of the head. 

In private, they both complain to me about how the other “talks too much and never listens.” Personally, I think they’re both guilty of that, and deliberate miscommunication, and maybe of having a second alcoholic beverage at dinner and pulling up their Irish (Dan) or Lithuanian (Doug) roots. 

If it was two women, well, just one of these conversations would end the relationship. But the wonder of male relationships (to me) is that they usually end up apologizing and picking up right where they left off. With the French Open.