Benny Jay: Mother's Day

We go to our favorite Italian restaurant for Mother's Day. Nobody gets plastered, but we have a few drinks. Manhattans for my parents, beer for me. My sister and wife are drinking something -- can't remember what.

By the end of the dinner no one's feeling any pain. My younger daughter orders tea -- Earl Grey. "I don't like Earl Grey," my sister says.

"You're not drinking it," I tell her.

My mother tells a story about a girl she knew in college who stole a towel from a hotel: "They found the towel in her suitcase. I said, `You don't need that towel.' She said, `I always wanted that towel.'"

The conversation moves to a discussion of Key West in Florida. My father talks about the writers who have lived there. "Hemingway and Wallace Stevens once had a fist fight," he says.

I shouldn't say anything, but he has to be wrong. Wallace Stevens is too old to be a contemporary of Hemingway. The old man's slipping -- he's getting his poets mixed up.

"Stevens broke his fist when he hit Hemingway in the jaw," he continues.

I shake my head. "That didn't happen," I say.

"Yes, it did...."

"It couldn't. Stevens is twenty years older than Hemingway. That's like you having a fight with...." I try to think of a colleague or a friend who is twenty years younger than my father.

"They had a fight," he says. "You can look it up...."

The conversation moves to Pete Seeger. My sister says they just had a concert in New York City, celebrating his 90th birthday. "Bruce Springsteen was there," she says.

"But your friend didn't show," my father says to me.

"Which friend?" I say.

"Dylan...."

I think -- don't fall for it.

"He is your friend?" says my father, as if I've ever even met Bob Dylan.

"Dylan snubbed Pete Seeger?" asks my mother.

I fall for it. "We don't know if he was invited...."

"Why wouldn't he be invited?" says my sister. "You know he was invited. He's still mad at the folk singers for things that happened forty years ago...."

"We don't know he was invited," I say.

"He should get over it," says my sister.

I stop. Why am I falling for this? I'm a thousand years old and I'm still falling for this.

"The point is that one of them is a leftist and the other is a religious rightist," says my father.

I fall for it again. "Okay, Dylan's not a religious rightist," I say.

"But didn't he become a Christian?" asks my mother.

"That doesn't make him a religious rightist," I say.

"But why didn't he go to Pete Seeger's party?" asks my mother.

"Maybe he wasn't invited," I say.

"Of course, he was invited," says my sister.

"How do you know?" I say. "Did you make the invitations?"

Ah, weak response. I'm not up to my usual game. I should drink more. Maybe I'd be wittier if I drank more.

Later that night I go to my computer and look up Wallace Stevens and Ernest Hemingway. I'll be goddamn -- there it is. They quote a letter that Hemingway wrote, and it's just like my dad said: "Mr. Stevens hit me flush on the jaw with his Sunday punch bam like that. And this is very funny. Broke his hand in two places. Didn't hurt my jaw at all."

What an arrogant ass Hemingway was. Makes me want to hear Stevens' side of the story.

Oh, well -- I should know better. There are four arguments you will never, ever win: A baseball argument with Big Mike Glab; a basketball argument with Norm; an argument about The Beatles with my sister (she knows freaking everything about The Beatles); and an argument about poets and/or poetry with my father.

No matter how old he is....

Benny Jay: Southern Man On The Radio

In the middle of the day, I get my Younger Daughter out of school and drive her to the orthodontist.

While she's getting her braces removed, I'm killing time at Einstein's bagel shop -- head down, lost in thoughts, jotting notes to myself, concentrating on the words -- when I hear her call my name.

I look up and I see her only I have to look twice to make sure it's really her. It's like I dropped her off when she was 15 and suddenly she's 17.

"I look older, don't I?" she says.

I'm not sure what to say, so I try to say something funny: "Okay, that's it -- we gotta watch out for those boys...."

"Dad...."

"The horny bastards...."

"Oh, my God...."

"Did your older sister give you the older sister talk yet?"

"You are so weird...."

Back in the car, heading for school, I'm feeling like time's passing too fast. I'm heading into a new phase of life and I'm not sure I want to get there.

Then "Southern Man" comes on the radio.

"Yes!" I exclaim.

I crank up the dial and sing along. I know the words so well, I'm like Pete Seeger leading the crowd through "This Land is Your Land." I call out the line before Neil Young sings them: "`I see cotton and I see black....'"

"He's talkin' about slavery," I say.

"`Tall white mansions and little shacks....'"

"Tell it, Neil, tell it...."

"`Southern Man when will you pay them back?'"

I'm slamming my hand against the steering wheel in beat to the song....

"`I hear screamin' and bullwhips crackin' -- how long, how long, ahhh!'"

"He's not even singing anymore. He's so mad -- he's just howling. You tell `em, Neil!"

We stop at the light. "Listen to the guitar solo -- it's blind rage!"

I'm doing a wicked air guitar. Got my left hand working the frets and my right hand picking the strings. I'm playing note for note with Neil Young. At some point I switch to air piano, banging the imaginary keyboard. Then I go back to guitar. Man, I do it all....

When the song's over, I'm almost exhausted.

"Good song," says my daughter.

"God, I love Neil Young," I say. "He's one of the only old rockers who gets better with time. Like John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan -- especially Bob Dylan."

We drive the rest of the way in silence. At the school, she flashes me a no-braces smile and says, "thanks, dad," as she hops out the door.

"Don't forget to watch out for those boys," I yell. But she's gone so fast she doesn't hear a word I'm saying....