A Memorial Day Vocabulary Lesson From Randy Honaker

"That's not a thing."
My brother and I are standing in the downpour under my fabulous many-kitten-faced umbrella staring at my father.
He is seated in his green rope porch swing holding court next to the grill.
He has just said a word I have certainly never heard before and I spent the first sixteen years of my life doing nothing but reading words in books and drinking Hardee's sweet tea.
I am almost skeptical. But not quite. My father is extremely smart. I am, however, curious.
"Say that again."
He cuts incredulous sky blue eyes to me and repeats himself: "I said be sure to champhfur* that pole before you put it in."
I look at Scott. He has never heard of such a thing either. I hold strong.
"I don't think that's a thing. But I'll look it up."
[Sidenote: I am SURE it's a thing. But I have no idea what it is and it sounds very uncomfortable, so this will be more fun.]
It's just as well we don't pursue this now- I am, after all, in charge of grilling the Memorial Day burgers for the first time since I was twelve and did a fine job of Frisbee-ing rock solid off-pink meat discs from Sam's Club onto the grill for the church youth group. I felt I did very well. This is a prime example of being lulled into a false sense of security about one's meat-handling abilities.
In the kitchen earlier on this Memorial Day 2016, my mother asks me to look up a baller burger recipe.
[She absolutely did not use the word "baller."]
I find one that has received like, 11 out of 5 stars, and reel it off to her. It involves eggs, which she finds questionable, but I've always adored breaking eggs, so we stick with it. We mash our thumbs deep into the patties as we gook them together because some newfangled trend suggests putting a hole in your pattie so it doesn't lift or bloat on the grill/in the oven.
[Sidenote: Frankly I feel that regardless of how many holes you put in your pattie- your own or someone else's- that pattie is going sizzle and suffer in the oven or grill and it won't matter one bit that it sported a cunning dimple while it was at it.]
My father has turned on the grill, per our request, about twenty minutes earlier. I stalk out onto the porch with my kitten umbrella and plate of dented patties in tow. I am pretending to be very confident. Even though no one is out there to see me except for Brody the destructive and brainless Australian Shepherd and Herschel the....something or other with large ears. They are entertaining themselves by racing full steam up and down the fence line in the backyard. In complete silence. Which is great. I love a silence. But weird when the creatures being so silent are enormous drooling gasping running dogs in hot pursuit of each other. They make a few passes, during which they succeed in removing all the petals from the pink knockout rose bush I purchased for my mother a few Mother's Days ago. I watch them for awhile. It's like watching hairy, silent tennis.
Back to the burgers. I lift the grill lid. It's warm-ish under there, but I see no fire, just steam, and I certainly don't get that feeling I usually get when lifting a grill lid that my eyes are liquefying and will presently be dripping down my chin.
I plop the burgers down anyway. I figure- cockily and completely incorrectly- I'll figure this out.
Fast forward twenty minutes to aforementioned conversation featuring the mystery word.
Scott places his cup of sparkling pink lemonade precariously on a newel post and inches out to the grill under my kitten umbrella.. He lifts the lid. I nudge in beside him to admire my handiwork.
Well, the burgers are in clumps. Sodden, brown, gelatinous clumps. The clumps are periodically falling loose from their mother burgers and dropping into the dark, steaming, lukewarm depths of the grill.
My father glances over. He sighs. "My nice clean grill....."
Scott flops of few of the crumbling beef mounds onto the plate I'm holding. Scott, ever tactful, neatly sums up the situation- "Well, we can always go to Hardee's."
I flounce into the house.
Over dinner- which was DELICIOUS, I might add- I seize a moment when everyone is silently involved in their potato salad to bring up the "champhur" debate.
I whip out my phone and, scrolling past the thirteen terrible photos I've taken of my cat in the past hour, bring up Google. Ready to search.
"How," I say sassily to my father, "do you spell that word?"
He tells me. I've pictured it incorrectly. That's irritating.
I bring up the Wikipedia article on "chamfering."
Definitely a thing. A thing you do to wood or pipes, or any material really, I suppose (except mashed potatoes or things of that consistency), where you sand or cut away a right angled corner to make a symmetrical sloping edge. Tom Width totally knows what this is, I'm sure of it. When I ask him about it, he will act surprised and off-put that I didn't know the word already. Like if I'd asked him if he'd ever heard of apples. Or feet. Tom Width and my father get along splendidly.
I read the three paragraph definition of "chamfer" to the table. It's very involved. Origin in Norse mythology, heavily featured throughout Pilgrim history and coming largely to prominence during the Industrial Revolution. My brain stopped paying attention.
Satisfied that he has been proven correct, my father takes a victorious swallow of his ice-cold sweet tea and continues his chamfer instructions to my brother (which I'd interrupted on the porch earlier with my disbelief): "So yes, just be sure you chamfer the edges of that pole before you put it in the hole and go ahead and grease up the O-ring just to be on the safe side."
My mother bursts into laughter.
My sister-in-law focuses hard on her potato salad.
My father's sky blue eyes twinkle.
I have so many more questions.


*Not the correct spelling, turns out. Keep reading.