Badger

badger
verb, transitive. To ask someone repeatedly and annoyingly for something; to pester. Also, a noun.

He recoiled from the odor of alcohol on Frank's breath and studied his son's face. Yes, the young man wore that slightly silly grin Mark had noticed every time Frank had been drinking in secret. Mark started to speak, then paused. How much and how often could he badger Frank about this before Frank's ability to listen simply shut down?

"Maybe I'm too close to him to get through to him," Mark thought. "Maybe I should be dragging him to AA meetings instead." The idea elicited a chuckle. Frank outweighed him by a minimum of thirty pounds. Dragging him anywhere would be a brief exercise, at best. "I don't even know where to find an AA meeting," he continued silently. Mark had quit drinking without the support system afforded by Alcoholics Anonymous. He had done so by recognizing that he would die if he didn't. Die sick and alone, after losing his good job and probably all his friends. After his boss had approached him and delivered an ultimatum, he had never taken another drink again. He talked to Sherry about his decision and asked her for her support. He suffered through three days of cravings and strange dreams--near-nightmares--then realized that he was beginning to feel better, and feel better about himself, than he had in a long time. He had never been tempted to drink again after that.

Frank had been too young when Mark quit to recall his father's behavior when he drank, but Frank had evidently inherited the tendency to be an alcoholic. Mark knew he had to figure out some way of helping his son, if he didn't want to lose him.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.