If jocular strangers try to engage me at the bank or the supermarket, I either ignore them, or affect my best Charlie Manson. Why, then, is jawing with total strangers acceptable at sporting events, which are full of alcohol and kids? It probably shouldn’t be, because there’s a way to do it, but not everybody understands the ground rules, and that can cause trouble. At Gillette Stadium recently, a babbling drunk sitting near my friends and me said, Brett Favre is still great at 43. Smart people would have left it alone; we said, Favre is old, but not that old. The drunk bet us $100. My buddy said, Screw $100, let’s bet a toe. Whoever had the Internet on their phone started pushing buttons.
In the next row sat a dad, his little girl, and two boys, probably 14 and 11. The younger lad, who probably wouldn’t interject himself into stranger’s conversations anywhere else, turned around and said, with great certainty, Brett Favre is 43. The drunk shouted, There you go; that proves it! We contended the kid proved nothing. No, the drunk dramatically insisted, the kid knows! It was all quite funny, just harmless jawing. Even the kid laughed when Favre’s birthday emerged (October 10, 1969; Brett just turned 38) and we demanded the drunk’s digit. I told the young squire who had backed him up, Don’t audition for the Jeopardy! kids’ tournament just yet.
And that’s where it turned.
Somehow this offended his brother, so the 14-year-old starts mocking my hair, mouthing the words nice gray hair, while twirling a finger around his ear and rolling his eyes, as if enthralled with some invisible, but luxurious ’do. It was incredibly juvenile, and funny the first couple times. What the hell, right? We had gently mocked his brother’s feeble grasp of football minutiae, so I could absorb some razzing. Fair is fair. But the older brother didn’t stop. He kept telegraphing more junior-high abuse.
Eventually I told him it wasn’t funny anymore, loud enough for Daddy to hear, but Daddy did nothing. He was too busy simmering over the drunk dropping F-bombs, and spilling beer on his children. When all four walked up the steps at halftime my tormentor did a particularly elaborate pantomime. I said, Figure out when enough is enough, kid. After halftime they went down an extra couple rows, but the kid continued pointing at me and doing his act. It wasn’t hard to believe that a teenager would be such an asshole (that’s their job), but that his father would sit there and let him was.
With five minutes left in the game they rose to leave, and I saw the kid preparing a final performance. He was bringing up the rear, presumably to linger at our row and deliver his shtick, but before he could start I gave him the finger and said, loudly, Fuck you, kid. Not my classiest moment, I admit, but I’d had enough. He blinked a few times before slinking off. Thirty seconds later his father drops into the empty seat on my left, snarling and wanting to fight. I declined, because he was almost 60 and I didn’t feel like getting thrown out of the game, but when my buddy offered to fight him and his sons, we got shown the gate anyway.
