The Cookies

Remember in 1969 when those guys walked on the moon?  We, my wife and I, and our eldest child were on the Vineyard with friends who had a friend who invited us to watch the event on television.  Our hosts did not have a television set so this seemed ideal.  The woman who invited us was an imperious self important rich, and I mean rich, person whose marital career included among others a European titled gentleman.  This was the real McCoy.  As we were seated before the screen a maid brought in a large scotch cooler container filled with freshly baked cookies which she passed around to our oohs and aahs of delight, and then set down on the carpet next to the mistress of the house.  After a certain length of time my son, who was 12, I believe, got up from his seat and went over to the container and took out a second cookie.  Our hostess sharply reprimanded him in the way no thinking adult would do, no polite hostess would do, and in my mind only a colossal bitch would have managed to pull off.  Still we had to preserve the amenities.  To her remonstrance my son, without visibly seeming to be shaken by her words, replied calmly and coolly:  "Well, I thought that the lady had brought them out here for us to eat and enjoy, so I just helped myself to another."  No apology because he clearly did not see that one was called for.  No acknowledgement of a hierarchy where adults call the shots, where hostesses most particularly do so.  A clear understanding that a large container filled with cookies brought into a room, unless intended to be consumed is nothing but weirdo display and delayed gratification in the power of a dominatrix hostess.  I saw this charming, genial, kindly young man in a new light ever after.  He is a gentle soul, father to two, now grandfather to two, who has always followed as they say his own drummer.  My wife once bought him a used Boy Scouts uniform at the Goodwill Store in Palo Alto, and his fellow Scouts all quickly noted that his was "used," and asked him why, in a sneering tone, to which he genially and comfortably replied: "Well, when you get yours washed, then they'll be used, too, so I just wanted to get a jump on you guys."  That was more or less at the same age, maybe a year or two earlier, since we were still in Palo Alto.  Sticks and stones may break your bones,  and all that stuff; he was a remarkably self possessed child, remains so now.  A peculiar kind of constant good will flows through his veins.  He is not in competition with anyone.  When he was maybe a junior in a very high end  public high school where the best of the Ivy Leagues was supposed to be everyone's target he once quietly said to his mother and me that he really did not like aggression and the competition that went with it, that he was turned off by trying to succeed and that he would never like to live life as his professor father and architect mother did, searching for success, anxious to achieve, proud of our endeavors.  Well, that was that, and he never has.  He is, as the expression goes, laid back, works odd jobs, and remains genial, incredibly intelligent as he always has been, well read, ready to take another cookie if the chance presents itself, but not really caring one way or the other.