Not that we need to delve into the inconsistencies, but I am as fond of my family as the average mammal who isn't biologically compelled to eat its offspring. In fact, the members of our little group elevate me more than I repress them, which was not the plan when this all began sometime in the last century. My wife? Undisputed quality in all areas. The children? Surprisingly close to tolerable, which is to say employed, educated, decent people who have never been guests of the state. Add to that a future daughter-in-law who .... well, put it this way. If she was looking for a blessing (and she's not because this isn't 1958), she'd have to get it elsewhere.
Oh, on all other fronts she is an untrammeled delight: charming, witty, friendly, open, generous, empathetic, industrious, a deeply committed Normal Gossip devotee—all the things you want in a human being and most pets as well. The male child could not have chosen better in a hundred thousand tries.
But then there's this dark corner of her world. Not even a corner, really, but an item on the CV that were it not for all her virtues would represent a vice too large to come back from, specifically: She owns a piece of a sports franchise, and you know where that sits with your humble author—somewhere between puff adder and car salesman.
More specifically, she owns a share (with her father) of the Green Bay Packers, as many citizens of Greater Wisconsin do after decades of indoctrination. It's a conversation piece more than a status symbol, as all you get with the paper is permission to give the real swine who run the Packers annual offerings of season-ticket money, parking fees, brat sales, and scandalously overpriced t-shirts that most drunks don't even bother to wear when the temperature dips below hypothermic levels. That level of loyalty could be seen by many of our weaker brethren and sistren as an act of pure love.
Well, she's at the wrong window for that bullshit. Owners are, as you may have guessed from previous screeds, sub-contemptible bottom feeders whose greatest virtue is that if their pelts were worth the bother there'd be a bounty on them. They are rapacious, unethical, monstrous hellpigs who would sell their parents, steal them back overnight, and then sell them to someone else the next day at a 30-percent markup. There isn't enough potential jail time before the heat death of the universe for them, and the ones who didn't steal their wealth are dissolute nepobabies whose sole intellectual gift is in knowing people who can point them in the direction of the most corruptible politicians.
And now there's one among us, and worse, she's such quality on all the other fronts that I cannot hold this egregious character flaw against her. I could make a case for her selling her share to eradicate this stain on her résumé, but no, she loves her father too much for me to even ask, as though that were somehow a defensible reason to refuse if I did. In any other circumstances I could out her, shame her, break her, and drop her off dazed and confused in the woods like any other owner-class hyena, but she's better than that, and I am ashamed to admit that I like her even more because she didn't try to hide it. Frankly, she even gets points for not making her preposterous army of bridesmaids wear green-and-gold dresses and facemasked helmets of daisies.
In a nutshell, she doesn't act in any way like any of the owners we all know, which puts me in a quandary, as I know she must be punished but am having difficulty justifying it. Besides, I would probably be barred from doing so by my bride, who likes me despite all the prevailing evidence but would not be above murdering me in my sleep if I interfered with the smooth order of the wedding planning.
The most I can do, then, is simply to be the most atrocious babysitter in history if that time ever comes. She could hand me the cooing little chupacabra and I could see myself saying, "Why don't you have Mark Murphy do it?" And even then, my bride and her pure heart would watch any and all of their issue with joy, which means I won't even be allowed that opt-out.
My future daughter-in-law likes living things without feeling the need to exploit, swindle, or subdue them, so maybe she's not an owner after all. But she has all the paperwork, and there's no getting around that. She has rendered me an impotent hypocrite and can never be forgiven for it, even though she already has been. Goddamnit. At least they live in another state.
