That One Time... With That Lady... 's Face

Day 24

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Game 4 of the ALCS was postponed for rain until tomorrow, so today I tried to get some actual sleep – or that’s what I told myself when I awoke early again, rolled over, and defiantly tried to sleep some more. I managed maybe 6 hours of unquality sleep and then just lay in bed for more than two additional hours, having neither the gas nor the desire to actually get the fuck up and live my day.

I worked late, but I did manage to actually get up before I absolutely needed to and walk to a local pharmacy to get some (off-brand-but-sufficient) Q-tips. Then I wandered home and got ready to go to work, where I was not at all busy. Which is okay, tho - tomorrow I’ll get hammered with lessons, so I appreciated the relaxed day.

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While walking to the pharmacy, I was thinking about things my father liked. I have a growing text file of anecdotes and jokes and memories of him. But it also has, or now maybe primarily has, a list of things he used to love. I don’t know what sparked it, but I remembered a few moments from my childhood and these brought with them a number of things I quickly added to my list.

My teeth have never been great. When I was a kid I needed a number of dental surgeries (and then 5.5 years of braces). As my parents were divorced, my dad would always take me to the appointments and, afterward, as my mouth was filled with numbness and I would relax on our couch, my dad would bake bags of frozen French fries and we would watch comedies together. Things like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (where he’d explain the cameos) and Rustlers' Rhapsody. At this remove, I can’t recall much of the former, but the latter was one of the first movies that we watched together and just howled from laughter. I haven’t seen it in decades, so I’m not sure if it’s actually funny, but the memories of watching it are heartwarming – and, now, mine alone.

But the big one, which for some reasons had evaded me until this morning, is Jerry Lewis. Together, we must’ve watched The Errand Boy and The Bellboy and The Patsy and The Disorderly Orderly and Cinderfella an unreasonable number of times. He adored those movies and so did I.

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He always loved to laugh and he loved comedies – years later we’d watch movies like Silver Streak and Blazing Saddles and listen to the comedy albums by Bill Cosby, Steve Martin, George Carlin, Nichols and May, Woody Allen, and the Smothers Brothers; Spike Jones’ and Tom Lehrer’s ridiculous songs; etc. His laugh was big and contagious and one of life’s great sounds.

Making him laugh was easy. Making him really laugh, truly guffaw, was less easy and always a highlight for me. I didn’t manage it enough times, but when I did it felt like I was giving him something back. It felt good; I felt less useless. As I wrote the paragraphs above, I thought of a running joke between him and I that hit me like a gut-punch and brought tears to my eyes.

We sat in the waiting room of a doctor’s office when I was a small kid. Across the mostly empty, somewhat small room was a lady whose face rested in pursed lips and a fiercely furrowed brow – whether she was in fact, I cannot recall, but she looked absolutely furious. My dad was reading a magazine or something as we waited forever to see the doctor. I nudged him and mimicked the woman. Having not seen her, her looked at me confused for a moment then scanned the room – and immediately he started to laugh. I was maybe 7 years old. I’m 42 now and when he died. We’d make this facial expression to each other occasionally over the 35 intervening years and it would always, always make us laugh. As dumb as it was, it was ours; a memory I’ll cherish. I’m surprised I only just thought of it.

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It’s been 24 days and I wanna hear him laugh again. Make him laugh again.

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