My oldest daughter still lives with us. Though she has a doctorate in Musical Arts, she struggles to make a living. She’s a the assistant director of a local and successful children’s choir, directs the music program at a local church and has a small platoon of private students, all this while juggling a plethora of gigs and auditions. We figured out the other day that — accounting for time spent in meetings, music selection, and preparation — she’s not making even $10/hour in her directing jobs. That was a sobering realization given how hard she works. Recently, a new job came up: music director for a 50 voice choir at a large retirement community. They meet twice a week for one hour, and perform six times a year. She will likely take it if she can squeeze it into her schedule.

I provide this biography as something of a backdrop. All of her friends — smart and successful academically, most with graduate degrees — are struggling to get started in life. Some are married. Some are living with a would-be spouse, but remain uncommitted. Only a few have children. This weekend, there was a party for one such friend, a nice young man, a counsellor with an MS who works on the reservation as a psychologist. He’s the only counsellor in the federally-funded tribal health center. My daughter says it is a very sad and stressful job, though he doesn’t talk about it much. But now he’s moving to Atlanta! His live in girlfriend is entering a PhD program at Emory. He’s going to work in private practice.

This young man is of Indian descent, not American Indian, but Asian Indian. The irony of this was something that was never mentioned on the reservation, at least not in his presence. It was not lost on me though, so when my daughter was discussing his going-way party and the need for a gift, something to remind her friend of his AZ roots (he was born here) I suggested a cowboy hat. Reservation Indians love a good straw Stetson or a Resistol; it’s a status thing. So we went to the local Sabas in downtown Chandler and bought the young man a straw Stetson, the Cattleman style popular on the reservation.

Before she headed off to her church job on Sunday, I asked her how the party went. The hat, she said, not only fit perfectly (we guessed on the size) but was a huge hit. Everyone at the party wanted to wear it and her friend was very pleased. Then, I asked her if she had a good time. With this question I saw her face relax as a frown developed. The boyfriend of another friend, a young man who knows of my daughter is Christian and of a conservative bend, tried to turn the hat into political symbol of some kind, a representation of Indian repression and white racism. The fact that the recipient was the wrong kind of Indian made no difference; this gift was just more evidence of white ignorance and thoughtlessness. The young man making this point was, of course, white.

I’d like to say that my daughter emasculated this jerk with the torrent of logical lucidity expected of a doctor of the arts, but she didn’t. She tried — as I’m sure everyone else at the party did, and often must when this guy is present — to ignore him. But he’d built his speaker’s corner box and he wanted to lecture, which he did until he realized that no one wanted to listen.

But the waves of party fun were flattened by this scold.

Back in the day, jerks like this would be told to shut up or leave, in hopes that they would keep talking. The days of that kind of satisfaction are over.

I sure miss those days.