Teen Cloyce

A few years back (okay, quite a few years back; quiet Ron) when my children were in middle school, I spent some time as a baseball coach on their various teams. It was generally fun, and made for easy Dad points. I got credit for doing stuff with the kids all the while doing something I liked, namely messing around on a ball diamond hitting and catching and throwing with relatively like minded young individuals.

One day before a practice a fellow dad of a young boy on the team, I'll call the kid Teen Cloyce just to give him a name, asked if I could possibly give his son a ride home. "Sure," I told him. It was no trouble at all, and it wasn't. Mostly.

After practice I waited for all the other kids to get picked up, as I was head coach at the time and that was part of the job. When the last left I told me son Frank and Teen Cloyce, "I'm a bit hungry. You guys feel like McDonald's?"

It was surprisingly easy to convince a couple of 13 year olds that that was a fine idea. So we headed for the nearest Mickey D's.

We went inside and ordered at the counter. That's when Teen Cloyce out of the blue asked the young woman cashier, "Do you guys have one of those hidden warning buttons that you push to call the cops when someone's trying to rob the place?"

I'd have rather he had been brazen enough to ask her for her phone number. Instead she stopped suddenly and, mouth agape and eyes becoming pied, stared at Teen Cloyce. Then she looked fearfully at me, who was standing aside stupidly, my hands in my hoodie pockets exactly as though I might be carrying a hidden weapon. Her eyes began darting around for the manager.

That was when it hit me what Teen Cloyce had asked. "Cloyce! You don't ask things like that!"

"I was just curious!" he replied, slightly panicked by then himself.

Turning to the cashier I said, overly and overtly calmly, "We're just here for a late lunch." 

With a nervous smile she gave me my change. But I insisted to the boys that we would take our meals to a nearby park to eat.