Exreme solutions over a pint

I really enjoyed my evening in the pub today. It was prime pub chit chat and fun. This new bloke decided to air his concerns about his son and his wife. I shall call the new man the Interpreter because he interprets french to English and vice versa. His second wife he lives with is Japanese and his 16 year old son has been kicked out by his first wife and sent to stay with him. The young man found himself shoved onto a plane in Germany and ended up in London with his dad. The Interpreter's problem was his present wife was having an issue with talking to his son. The issue was over boundaries and as a Japanese woman she is somewhat tacit in what to say. To put it bluntly she just doesn't know how to talk to the kid. In turn the kid probably doesn't know quite what to say to her. Finding now he has been abandoned by his real mum who has just had enough of him, and although the Interpreter was saying his first wife was NUTs, all I can say is who can tell who is nuts nowadays? But going back to the 16 year old lad who speaks German, English and I expect probably French as well. Wow wish I could of spoken three languages at his age. Anyway the Interpreter finds he is now acting as a conduit between the two of them and he just doesn't know how to deal with it. The situation is becoming tiresome for him. In short he was looking for sympathy and answers. I tried my best to give him both in this situation, over a pint of Guinness of course. Actually it ended up being two pints and I was offered a third yet managed to refuse. Mind I must say my headache which I had at the start of the day isn't bothering me so much now. Which is good. As for the Interpreter his headache is still hanging around, I'm sure.

The situation sounded like one of language and of culture. The Interpreter confirmed there was a cultural aspect to his Japanese wife who was hot on cleaning up apparently. Sounds a bit like someone I know who has a thing about the t-towel being in the right place I thought. So being my half dizzy self I made a couple of suggestions and threw in some profound facts. Firstly I said they need to be forced to do something together. As they were not talking I wondered if it would be a good idea to gag them both and the put them in a life and death situation. Where they could not get out of it unless they worked together. The Interpreter confided in me he at first thought I was going to come out with some rational fact and I even sounded quite sane, but after this comment he wasn't so sure. But my notion was running on the concept both his Japanese wife and his German son had to speak to communicate with each other. Another witness to the conversation thought it was a bit extreme and I should write a book of extreme ideas on how to get out of situations. I didn't think this would be likely until I had at least two more pints and a pencil to write with. The Interpreter felt I wasn't being so helpful so I offered up another suggestion, because he obviously was not being taken in by this profound font of knowledge I possessed. The second idea was along the lines of throwing both his wife and son into a big tank full of water, one life belt and a shark. Of course to escalate the situation a little one of them would have to be cut. Just to add emphasis to the situation. Well what can I say. The Interpreter gave a loud half hysterical laugh and really didn't consider this as an option. Pity, I could see them thrashing about in the water and fighting over the life belt, which had been sprayed with a shark repellent substance. Perhaps my ideas were falling on deaf ears? At which moment I quoted to them something Thomas Edison had once said when trying to invent the light bulb. It was along the lines of "every time I fail, I get one step closer to success." At this point old Edison knew of one way which didn't work and so this was what I was trying to impart to the Interpreter. Though I really can't tell if he internalised exactly what I was getting at, as far as I was concerned although the examples might sounds extreme, the basic concept of conflict resolution was there, all he had to do was go and find a life belt.

I soon left the pub knowing my work had been done this day. I had succeeded in helping someone live their life a little easier. Of course, the Guinness sure did help.