Chapter 77

Tact:
About ten years ago I crewed for my son Jay in a gliding competition in Spain.
It was a good competition but Jay hit a problem. On three occasions in four or five days he landed short of the airfield.
In competition terms this is really bad news. Roughly speaking it costs one half of the points for the day. If you do it once your chance of winning the comp. is pretty well nil.
To do it three times is not clever.
As we drove the trailer across the airfield to pick up the glider, which was only about a half a kilometer away the atmosphere was a little tense.
Jay was not a happy bunny.
His observation was "you know dad I reckon I've been a bit unlucky really".
I, of course, should have agreed with him, but summoning up all my powers of tactlessness and negative diplomacy I ventured
"Don't you think, Jay, that when things keep going wrong then you should be asking yourself questions?"

The ensuing explosion was ,well, as explosive as it was prompt.
It consisted of two short sentences, that is to say short if one deleted the expletives.
The Bowdlerised version with the graphic and colourful expletives deleted went as follows:
"I wouldn't have you crew for me again if you were the last man left in the world!!!"
Followed by:
"And I wouldn't crew for you again even if you were the last pilot in the world".

Well we seemed to be in agreement but there was a job to be done so....
we stopped glaring at each other, got back in the car and completed the retrieve.

Now, of course, in the course of quite a long lifetime (so far so good) I should have learned a little more tact and also learned when to speak out ... and when to shut up.
Regrettably I am not good at learning about these things. Which brings me to my latest nonsense.

A few weeks ago my good friend khun B got involved in a bit of a fracas.
Apparently an ex-friend of hers arrived at her massage parlour supported by a cohort of friends bent on violence.
Her friends were restained by the staff but the leader spent ten minute or so in what I believe could best be described as a skirmish.
I believe, though I'm not quite sure, that the police were called and a fine was levied on the perpetrator for disorderly conduct or some such thing.
B was very upset and so I didn't talk about it, waiting for her to tell me about it if she wanted to. Wow sometimes I can do this tact thing.

Meanwhile through the Bangtao grapevine I heard the other side of the story according to which it was said that B had made disparaging comments about her former friend's boy friend.

When B eventually brought the subject up it was to say that they were bad people and not worth having as friends.
At that moment my tact failed.

"When things go wrong khun B don't you think you should be asking yourself questions?" I suggested.

That was two weeks ago or so and there is little sign at the moment that we will ever speak to each other again.............