T. GAMBLE: Whatcha mean acting the foot?

Last week, the city of Detroit decided to get rid of their old Silverdome stadium by imploding it. As most people know, Atlanta just successfully did the same thing with their stadium.

Unfortunately, once all the explosions went off, the Detroit stadium remained standing.

I’m stunned. If Detroit can do nothing else, it can certainly destroy something in a heartbeat. I don’t know why they didn’t just board up the old stadium, place a “Keep Out” sign on the front door and in two weeks the whole thing would have been torn down anyway. The whole city looks like Hiroshima, day three.

But they had to go back in there and do it all over and the second time I think they managed to destroy most of it.

Well enough about that. I’ve been thinking about when I grew up and especially about one phrase that sort of summed up everything. I’d sit around and listen to the grown folks talk out on the front porch, because folks were more congenial back then and did things like sit on the back porch and talk. Of course, they also sat out on the front porch and talked because it was 120 degree inside and the TV only got one station, but that little tidbit of facts just messes up a good story.

Invariably they would get around to talking about some uncle or good friend that was having trouble at home. They’d say, “Old Uncle Joe got locked out of the house last Thursday by Aunt Bessie.” “No kidding, what did he do to make Aunt Bessie do that?” And every time they’d say, “Well Uncle Joe was out acting the fool and she locked him out.”

End of story.

Yep, just plain old “acting the fool.” Every grown person knew what that meant for every occasion. You really needed no more details. I’d sit there scratching my head, wondering what in the world did Uncle Joe do?

Within an hour, in my imagination, I had him robbing a bank or running off with Aunt Bessie’s sister. Who knew what mischief he had wrought upon poor Aunt Bessie?

But the grown folks, they knew if that meant he ran around, or stayed out too late, or got drunk again just by how the person telling the story said “acting the fool.” Aunt Esther always accused Fred Sanford of “acting the fool.” She once told Fred to come clean because “the truth will set you free” and Fred quickly replied, “Yes, but a lie will keep you there.”

On the front porch, we would have known exactly why he needed to lie because he had been acting the fool.

Acting the fool was, of course, very bad. One would be better off accused of skipping church to fish on Sunday than acting the fool. But occasionally, the story would ratchet up when someone would say, “Uncle Joe was acting the fool” and (drum roll here, please) he was acting the fool because you know he is “bad to drink.”

Oh, my. If you got labeled with the bad-to-drink moniker, you may as well write your love ones a final letter and join the French Foreign Legion. Bad to drink explained all types of behavior, from cheating to kicking your dog. Folks that were bad to drink would do damn near anything, and little folks like me were warned not to go around Uncle Joe at night because, you know, “He is bad to drink.”

I guess nowadays no one is bad to drink, because it is a disease and we don’t act the fool. We just apologize and say we didn’t mean to do it and nobody says stay away from Uncle Joe because he is bad to drink, which makes him act the fool.

I like the old way better. It cuts down on all the explaining and groveling and apologizing. “Honey, I’m sorry. I was acting the fool and I promise not to act the fool anymore.”

Email columnist T. Gamble at [email protected].