It seems like only yesterday I was waking up early to sneak downstairs to watch real Saturday morning cartoons. Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner were my favorites. And the Three Stooges. Watching characters get smashed, blown up, shot, crushed and mangled always entertained me. So did America's Funniest Home videos. You know, the clips where people did dumb things and made disasters out of regular life.
That reminds me...
We were out to dinner last night for Sherry's birthday. We had gotten lucky with the baby's nap schedule and dinner happened in the middle of a sleep cycle. I typically don't enjoy taking a newborn and all her stuff out to fancy restaurants (see: circus-stunt sweaty backseat poopy-diaper-change slip-n-slide craptacular), but on some occasions it is necessary. It was nice. We could have a conversation for the first time in weeks, and I always enjoy talking with my father-in-law.
Terry and I seemed to have a connection since the first time we spoke. In his speech at our wedding he announced that the jokes I told weren't funny because he told those same jokes thirty years ago. He is not wrong. We have the same sick sense of humor. There is an unspoken kinship of some kind with the two of us and that has made for an easy transition from combative, protective father-figure to family member, friend and confidant.
So we ate, we drank, we laughed for what seemed like thirty seconds. We discussed writing, books, comedians, travel, and our little collaborative writing project: this blog. Briarly slept like, well, a baby.
Our meals were delivered. Terry was stirring his spaghetti and meatballs while we talked. Combining some mighty force, surgeon-like skill with his fork, and some good ol' fashioned Terry-like flair, his hand slipped down the fork straight into his spaghetti sending a medium-sized pasta projectile across the table directly onto Sherry's green and white blouse. I looked at him with a bit of haughty derision.
"Thanks, Terry", Sherry said, characteristically calm and matter-of-fact. It was as if this sort of thing has happened before! She cleaned herself up the best she could, we had a chuckle and continued enjoying our meal. Briarly slept through it.
I would not be outdone.
Three minutes later, as I was about to tell Terry that his storytelling reminded me of author and comedian Bill Cosby, something else happened.
I said to Terry, "Ya know, your writing writing reminds me of..."
At that moment I attempted the apparently inhuman feat of cutting my chicken parmesan. My fork broke through the chicken breast like I had split the tomato atom causing a shock wave of sauce and ravioli shrapnel to flow onto my shirt and pants.
We laughed hysterically. For ten minutes we were in tears and belly-pains of laughter and silliness at the sheer brilliance of two buffoons making almost the same mess within minutes. Briarly slept.
We calmed down and wiped our tears.
"Bill Cosby", I finally finished, even though the moment had been washed away by the sauce flow. We proceeded to finish our meals and get ready to leave.
Something occurred to me later that night...
We took a baby out to a fancy restaurant with all her stuff expecting crying, diaper disasters, having to take turns calming her while we took turns eating, and anything else a baby is capable of.
None of those things happened.
What did happen was Terry flung spaghetti onto his wife, I launched sauce and ravioli onto myself, and Briarly slept. We dragged our fat, happy asses out of the restaurant looking like we had a food fight. It was time go go home and hose off the big chunks. We had a wonderful time.
Someday we will tell Briarly tales of our follies and laugh some more. But, for now, Briarly slept through it. Good for her.
This must be good, Chris, because I read it again tonight, and I was laughing out loud to myself, as I did that night. Thank you! Oh, yeah, you tried to put it all in perspective. And we all appreciate that. But there's no getting around how stupid we are. We have to revel in it! And I'm here to tell you, I, for one, EMBRACE my stupidity! God! I can't deny it!
ReplyDeleteIf I weren't embracing our stupidity, I would never have written a post about how stupid we are! I also revel in it. I like to think of it as smart humility with a side of imbecility.
ReplyDeleteI have a hard time these days NOT putting things in "baby perspective". She sorta dominates my existence.