Fat Mack and I were meeting up for lunch at the diner to discuss a project we’re working on. Can’t talk about it here, ‘cause it’s still in the hush-hush stage.
We didn’t have a lot of time to meet when we walked into the restaurant. It was busy, but Uncle G was there, sitting in a booth all by himself. We looked at each other and without a word between us decided to invade his space.
“Wassup, Unc?” Fat Mack slid into the booth opposite Uncle G. He liked to have a side all by himself, and nobody argued with him. Better to be banished to the other side of the table than to be crushed to death by the man mountain.
Uncle G looked up from his paper and frowned. “President Obama done lost his mind, telling the schools they got to let the transgender kids go to whatever bathroom they think best fits them.”
“What’s wrong with that?” I asked.
“Is you crazy, too?” he asked. You want your kid sitting up in the toilet when a boy who wants to be a girl comes into the bathroom? Wrong plumbing, is all I’m saying.”
“Uncle G,” I protested, “if a transgender girl walks into the girl’s bathroom, it’s a girl going to the girl’s bathroom. So, even though she still has male ‘plumbing’ as you call it, she’s a girl in her mental makeup.”
“I know where you’re coming from, though,” Fat Mack said, shaking his head at me. “What happens when the straight guys start pretending to be transgender just to get into the girl’s without anybody being suspicious?”
“What’s your point?” I asked. “Straight guys do that now. And they get arrested for it. Look, no straight guy is going to pretend to be transgender. So, you can file that under “not gonna happen.”
“Yeah, you got a point,” Mack said.
“For sure.” I said. “A criminal could to that right now.”
“Alright, alright, alright,” Mack said. “I tried to help you out, Uncle G, but you’re on your own.”
“Who invited you two yahoos to come over here and sit down anyway?” G asked, obviously trying to think of another point to argue.
“Uncle G,” Mack waited til G looked up at him, “You’re always calling somebody a ‘yahoo.’ I’m gonna start calling you a ‘bing’. He kind of looks like a ‘bing,’ doesn’t he, Scoop?”
Mack caught my eyes and gave me that slight uptoss of the head that told me instantly that someone was approaching from my rear. Without looking, I knew it was Shirley. Mack knows that I love me some Shirley.
“Your regulars, guys?” she asked, trying to avoid my gaze.
“The search engine?” Uncle G responded. “Boy, you kiddin’? Tell you what– you look up ‘yahoo’ in the dictionary on your phone there, and right beside the word you should find a picture of somebody that looks a whole lot like you.” G amused himself so much he couldn’t help chuckling.
“Yeah, well I guess we all know what you’ll find if you look up the word, ‘jackass’,” Mack shot back and turned to give Shirley his order.
Uncle G sputtered. “what did you say, youngblood? Did I hear disrepect? Uh unh, Uncle don’t play that. No siree, Uncle don’t play that. You ain’t too big for me to take this here bad leg off and wear your butt out.”
“Can’t take it like you dish it, huh?” Shirley playfully asked Uncle G, immediately calming him down.
“Got my blood pressure up,” Uncle G smiled at Shirley. “Listen, you all don’t have one bathroom for both men and women do you?”
“Yeah, we want our usuals,” I said, glancing at Mack, who confirmed with a nod. “But I’d like little something extra.”
Shirley looked at me, and tilted her head. “No, we don’t,” she answered Uncle G. “Why?”
“And what else did you want?” she said to me.
“If I could just get a little bit of you as part of my main dish,” I said, “I’d be the happiest man in the world.”
She looked over at me, shook her head, and without a word turned and headed for the kitchen. Mack and Uncle G were grinning at me when I turned back to them.
“Yep, that gal likes you, boy,” Uncle G chuckled.
“How you figure that?” I asked.
“’Cause she didn’t tell you where you could go,” he said. “You young whippersnappers don’t know nothing. You should try and read a book every now and then.”
“Did he say ‘whippersnapper’?” Mack asked. I laughed.
Shirley was back with our food. She must have put in our orders before she asked us what we wanted. “You know you and I were meant to be togther,” I told her.
She stared at me long and hard. “You know I can’t tell if you’re really serious or if you’re just talking. And as for those bathrooms, Uncle G, if you’re talking about what the President did, the main reason grown people don’t share public bathrooms is because you men are so nasty. But I’m sure everybody at your house, visitors included, uses the same bathrooms all day every day and nobody there gives a thought to whether the last person in was transgender or not.”
“Damnnn,” Fat Mack said slowly. “Shirley just gave you a transgender beatdown, Uncle G.”
“Shut up, Mack,” Uncle G said, snapping his newspaper back into place. “Just shut up and eat your food.”
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