OTTAWA – The children of the Cartwright family are raising a stolen pint glass this father’s day, to celebrate the man who taught them how to look not drunk.
“You really can never tell with us,” said first born Bradley Cartwright, enunciating perfectly after his fifth beer, just like his old man raised him to do. “And even if you could, you couldn’t talk about it without making a scene.”
The toast, an annual tradition, is made using the lowest possible price-per-unit German beer, in glassware methodically pilfered over the years from Phil Cartwright’s favourite pub.
“It’s like a I grew up at that pub,” said second child Emily, holding her glass of scotch with the steady hands of a surgeon. “We’d stop in on the way home from school, shell peanuts at the bar, and he’d say, ‘Everybody does it,’ as he stuffed an unbranded pint glass in my knapsack. Here’s to you, Pop.”
Always red-faced with jovial cheer, Phil Cartwright is known to neighbours for his 40 years of service with the federal government, his firmly unbroken home, and for the thick rubber band he uses to hold shut his cash-stuffed wallet.
As the evening drew to a close, Phil’s wife of ‘fifty-odd years,’ Mary Cartwright, was stacking empties in a dark corner of the garage.
“Sure, we and the kids like to have a drink from time to time,” said Mary. “In separate rooms, obviously.”
At press time, Mary had retired to bed with a headache, managing to not look like she was seething with generations of suppressed rage.
