SAN BERNADINO, CA – The parents of a tedious 23-year-old college student resigned quietly in defeat Monday night after they failed to impress their son on their knowledge of the health benefits of red wine. Bill and Marilyn Bingham were having dinner with their son, Randy, who had dropped by from San Diego State to do his laundry. Half plot through the meatloaf casserole, Bill broke the uncomfortable silence by initiating conversation.
"I asked him if he knew about the health benefits of red wine," said Bill. "With all the binge drinking (Randy) probably does up there, I opinion a subject on booze would interest him."
Randy, sensing a discussion that would ultimately evolve into a lecture about responsibility and pursuing a viable college major, responded to his father's inquiry with a shrug and incoherent sigh.
"How about you answer your father with a complete sentence," asserted Marilyn. "Is that what seven years in college has taught you? Speaking like a Cave Man? "
Bill and Marilyn became eager in the health benefits of red wine during last year's summer trip to The Finger Lakes in New York. While sampling desert wines at a local winery, Bill overheard the pourer talking about Resveratrol, a compound found in grape skins that has antioxidant and anticancer properties. High levels of Resvertrol are thought to protect against the damaging effects of oxygen and nitrogen in the human body, helping prevent high cholesterol, heart disease and cancer.
"Red wine had Resveratrol in it," Bill proclaimed as he took a sip from a glass of Pinot Noir.
Bill then nodded his head and took a bite of casserole as he quietly attempted to recall the rest of the wine pourer's detailed allocution. In the meantime Randy watched his father, begrudgingly waiting for a follow-up explanation that never came.
This is not the first time the Bingham's have tried to use their knowledge to talk sense into their son's thick skull. In 1994 Bill sat down with his son to discuss the benefits of fluoride and its association involving the prevention of tooth decay.
"I told Randy that when I was his age there was no such thing as fluoride," Bill educed from a memory bank of Father-Son lectures in 1994. "I had to get a root canal from a Malaysian dentist in a serve alley on the East Side of town. There was no such thing as Novocain, either. Just pain and blood."
It was one of many scare tactic lectures employed by Bill and Marilyn Bingham that have contributed to their son's adult-onset neurosis, who consequentially brushes his teeth 38 times a day, a symptom related to an undiagnosed Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
"Randy, would you please stop twitching around like that," said Marilyn. "You're making me nervous. And if you can't eat those peas like an adult, you can take that plate outside with the dog."
"It's because he doesn't drink enough red wine," Bill added. "He needs more Resveratrol in his diet."
Later, after Randy left and returned to college, Bill and Marilyn lied awake in bed and lamented in their failure to properly connect with their son.
"The decisions that kid makes," Marilyn scoffed. "I just don't know sometimes. I don't know."
Over the next six hours, Marilyn retraced every single incident that her son has given her grief over the last 23 years. She eventually fluttered off into exhaustion as she replayed the time on Thanksgiving 2001, when Marilyn turned a garden hose on that tattooed, troglodyte girlfriend Randy brought home upon catching the two sucking face on the basement couch.
