Hi, this is Frank Flaherty. Welcome to Brooklyn, that highly overhyped part of NYC, for another weekly episode of “Dad, Interrupted.”
“Dad, Interrupted” is a newsletter where I describe, in lighthearted, moderately embroidered stories, my family-man misadventures. The cast of characters includes my wife, my kids, my friends, my in-laws and the assorted chuckleheads I bump into.
This week, I will explore the shortcuts of life — the hacks, the tricks, the things that don’t necessarily transform your world, but just make life a little bit easier.
This topic interests me because sometimes the tricks that make life “a little bit easier” actually make them a lot easier. My wife Jeanette, for example, takes loads of pictures and films. She is the family historian, the historian of our neighborhood and friends, the historian of our lives, really. Given all the photos and films she has taken, you can bet that I have posed for them a ton.
And every time I have posed, I have tried to smile and have failed. Instead, my face looks like I stepped on a nail.
So imagine my surprise and chagrin when I recently learned that if you squint your eyes slightly as you attempt to smile, you can look like you are really smiling, like you are genuinely enjoying the moment.
Yes, smiling nicely for posterity is a little thing. But given the thousands of images taken of me during my lifetime, maybe this little photo hack is not so little.
I have no natural instincts for such hacks, and I don’t blame anyone for that. But here’s what gets my goat: When someone you know knows a shortcut, AND they know it’s a shortcut you need, AND, STILL, they don’t tell you about it. Don’t we all know someone like that?
Six thirsty guests to go. I’m standing on a very long drinks line at a wedding reception at a seaside restaurant on Long Island. As I scan the seagulls flapping outside the windows, I hope that for my next round the line will be much shorter. I don’t want to watch any more bartenders plopping any more cherries into any more Manhattans — and I don’t want to see any more seagulls either.
But the bar line stays long and thirsty the whole evening. When the ringbearer throws up from too much cake — a sign on Long Island that a wedding reception is winding down — I was complaining to another wedding guest, who was a friend of mine, about my frustrating waits for my Brooklyn Lager beers.
“I really understand the art of making Manhattans now,” I whine.
“Yea,” he says. “Every time I looked, I saw your bald spot on the bar line.”
My friend was feeling no pain, and it then occurred to me that I’d never seen HIM waiting on the bar line. Curious, I asked him how that could be.
“I never get on line,” he said.
It’s a hallmark of people like this particular friend that they never answer the question they were asked.
“I know you didn’t get on line. That’s what I just said. And yet, you are clearly very happily lubricated, amigo. So my question is, ‘How can you be so lit?’”
“Simple,” he slurred. “When I go to a wedding reception or other big party, I head right for the bartender, give him $20 or $40 depending on the classiness of the affair, and just ask him to keep me topped up.”
“Wait,” I said. “He didn’t deliver drinks to your table, did he?”
“No. I just told him where I was sitting and to keep an eye out for when I signaled. Then, when I did, he’d make my drink and put it at the end of the bar and I’d go pick it up and pay for it.”
“So, you basically bribed the bartender so you could cut the line.”
“Exactly,” he said.
Now, I hate many types of guys.
I hate face men, who bedazzle women with their looks but are basically schmucks. (Please note: I am not saying all handsome men are face men. I am saying all face men are handsome men. There’s a big difference.)
I hate slickos, the kind of guys whose hair is suspiciously perfect even in gale-force winds. There is something about those guys that’s fishy.
And I despise stage dads — guys who interact with their kids in public in a loud, fake-sensitive way, so onlookers can admire their parental dedication.
But the guys I hate the most are like my wedding friend. The “I know a guy” or “I know a trick” guys. These guys can also be women. It’s a type, not a gender.
In the early years of the internet, I spent hours and hours online and on the phone, scrounging around to find a super-tiny toilet that would fit into the snug bathroom we were illegally building in our basement. I finally found one. Then, some time after that, at a back yard barbecue, I told some friends about my successful but very draining search for a tiny toilet.
“Oh, too bad,” said a friend chomping on a burger.
“Huh?”
“I know a guy who could’ve got you any kind of plumbing stuff. Tiny toilets, whatever. At wholesale prices.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Oh. I figured you must’ve known your own guy.”
That’s another hallmark of “I know a guy” guys. They never weigh in until after the horse has left the barn.
I Know a Guy