More Funnies?

Matt, while home for his winter break, sometimes drove my truck which was invariably tuned to old time radio shows.

“Dad, I’ll be driving along for five minutes and then realize I’ve been listening to complete gibberish.”

I do like that word gibberish and it’s relative gibbering. One of those shows described a mad scientist (are they any other kind?) who created hybrid human monkeys he called his “boys.” The telltale noise emanating from the threatening forest? Gibbering.

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Jeff and I had knocked off maybe ten of those home improvement projects when I chastised him for sitting down. It was the end of the day, and I wanted to complete one more task. He looked at me and said, “Listen, mothafucka, I’m on vacation.” For that one you might have had to have been there, as well as his own rejoinder when his days off had come to an end. ”Work’s gonna feel like a vacation.”

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It’s about eleven at night and Karen’s caught me cleaning out her refrigerator. Yeah, I guess I was manic. She asked, “Are you going nuts?” She looked so concerned that I had to take the question seriously. I mean, I might have been, but I didn’t think so. “If I were, you’d know by my stare.”
To which this woman with far more on her mind than I, replied, “If you are, I’ll beat the shit out of you.”

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Good friends of my parents decided at age fifty or so to adopt a child. Given their age and possibly their previous lives (he a priest, she a nun), they knew they’d face skeptical agency heads. Nevertheless, they trundled down to their local Catholic Charities where the woman in charge placed a photograph in front of them of the available infants. They oohed and aahed at each face, but one baby really caught the prospective father’s eye. He pointed to the smallest one and said, “There’s something about that baby’s eyes I don’t quite understand.” To which the church lady said, “That’s not a baby, that’s a Cabbage Patch doll.”

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I did it again. Twice.

I’m next to the dairy case at Idylwilde and in my cart are three carefully selected items. I maneuver around a woman stuck in front of butter and milk, stop, and then drift off while pondering what yogurt to select. Finally, I snap back and scoot away with the cart. Then I hear, “That’s mine.” Then, “THAT’S MINE.” “Oh,” I reply. “I’m sorry, I’m always grabbing the wrong cart.” She barely smiled.

I patrol the rest of Idlywilde wandering like Jeffie in Family Circus until I’ve gathered all I need for my next two dinners. I pull up to the check-out counter and I reach into my cart, and realize I don’t recognize a thing. Where’s my olive tampanade, my plum tomatoes, and my overly expensive peanut butter brownies. And why is there a gallon of cider where my low fat milk should be?