The Power Of Laughter

     Without doubt, the funniest thing I've ever personally witnessed happened in the middle of Lincoln, Nebraska's "O" Street back in the winter of '72 or so.  We were in the back of schoolmate Doug Wilken's parents covered pickup when my other schoolmate Jerry Scott decided to moon the car behind us.  The sight of him alternately looking forward to see if Doug's parents were looking back while looking back to see if the driver of the car behind us was looking forward (certainly hope he was) while at the same time trying to yank his pants down in a moving car that was stopping all too inconveniently often while trying to negotiate

weekend "O" Street traffic still brings me to laughter if I think about it a little.  It was quite the sight.  Know how sometimes you get to laughing so hard all that comes out is a series of silent AH AH AH's?  It was like that.
     See, the ability to make one a laugh is an amazingly powerful thing.  Guys in school who weren't that good looking could almost always get a weekend date if they could create laughter in girls who under normal circumstances wouldn't give them a second glance.  The guys who were good looking, popular, or played sports could of had the IQ of a house plant - and most did - and the humor quotient to match and still got dates. Some guys - like me - had neither.  But over time I learned to adapt by developing a nasty albeit off-centered sense of humor.  Had to.  Because my looks weren't improving.
     I can still remember watching Jackie Gleason on my parent's old black and white television ending his monologue with "And....Away We Goooooo!!"  That was probably my first comedic influence, but not my last.  I progressed not soon after to Monty Python (the Albatross sketch is brilliant), and eventually to Robin Williams who is one of only a very few human beings who can make me laugh right out loud.  And Don Rickles too, now that I think about it.
     See, laughter is a great tonic for the masses.  It breaks ice between people who have little to nothing in common, between people of divergent nations, crossing socio-economic boundaries with the leap of a single pratfall, and melts even the coldest stares from any in-law anywhere.  It binds us all.  People instinctively seek it out in others, seeing it as a desirable quality that often times trumps all others.  Music does that too:  Ever wonder how Lyle Lovett was actually at one time married to Julia Roberts?  I'm convinced that Nature put two things in people and on Earth so that average to poor-looking guys still had the chance to procreate:  A sense of humor and musical ability.  As the years go by, I become more and more convinced of that theory.  Think Eddie Van Halen would have got with Valerie Bertinelli had he boxed straws for a living?  Not a chance.
     I've always had another theory and it is about squirrels.  It would seem that over time the ones that are

stupid enough to go out in traffic and get run over would be obviously removed from the gene pool, leaving only the smart surviving ones to send their genes onward.  Which would then lead - over time - to less and less dead squirrels.  And yet, you still see nut-chasing roadkill all over the nation's roads at about the same frequency. Why?  Because the humor they possess piques the interest of the female squirrels long enough for them to mate and then - and only then - do they get a little too close to the road in search of a laugh before mailing it in to the great seltzer bottle in the sky.  It makes sense if you think about it a little.
     So take heart, those of little physical gifts!  Can't lift 100 pounds?  Does your face scare old women to the other side of the street?  Have a habit of getting run over?  Have a lot of body hair?  There is hope.  Instinctively look for the funny in everything, and do it first before all else.  When you hear something, immediately think this:  What's funny about that?  If it doesn't come to you right away, don't say anything because chances are it's probably not all that funny.  But if it does seem funny, share it.  Let it out to others.  Give yourself a chance to pass on the genes of the disadvantaged, yet funny.  I don't want to be the only one left when it's all over.
        
     
    

Literary Hell And The Power And Difficulty Of Creation

     I've been working on composing a novel for some time now.  It's taking forever mostly because pesky little things like earning a living keep getting in the way of writing.  I'm guessing the most successful writers already have written great money-making novels, which gives them a big enough nest egg which then allows them to sit at home in their underwear tap tap tapping away using million dollar words to form sentences into paragraphs and then using them end to end to write something that someone - anyone - might pay money to read.  It's a vicious cycle.
     I've shared the idea for my novel with enough people and received enough positive feedback - and to be honest, a couple blank stares - to be pretty sure I'm on the right track

with it.  Without giving away the plot line, it involves the power and vulnerability of one person who uses the best and worst of both of those qualities in an attempt to change the world.  Of course there's complications and roadblocks that get in his way like the mundane minutiae of domestic life, an eccentric neighbor, an underworld puppeteer who calls the shots from afar, an unrewarding job, and, oft times to the story's protagonist, a defective television satellite system who drives him ten sheets to the wind crazy.  
     However, the hero is not alone.  A beautiful and previously lost soul comes out of the ether to his side serving a dual purpose:  A much-needed aide for him while at the same time giving long-awaited and deserving justice to her.  Of course there are complications and plot twists and a triple-unseen never-saw-that-coming ending times three but what good story doesn't?  
     Not all have a triple-unseen ending?  Well, mine does.
     What I've found the most interesting about "the process" is that over time you begin to immerse yourself in the "lives" of your characters.  You begin to care about them.  You begin to sense their wants and needs.  They become real.  They transcend being the figments of your imagination.  You want things to turn out well for them.  You find yourself thinking of them like lost and/or current loves at random times of the day when you are nowhere near a keyboard.  They are simply alive.  And for that reason, you hesitate to initiate a plot line

where one of them would meet an untimely demise.  Not that I would let that literary form of puppy love get in the way of a good story, but I'm just saying.
     So for now the characters live vicariously through me and my whims, surviving in a petri dish of imagination under the protection of a steadily balding dome, all the while beginning to feel the power they have over me to control things, and to shape the story and their lives.  I kind of fear the moment of the tipping point where the outcome is no longer in my hands, and where the story will then begin to write itself.  The story will then turn out much better than it would have been had I maintained control, and allowing that to happen will once and for all prove that one's knees are not in fact the first thing to go.
     It's your ego.  

Coach Ed

     If you grew up in Northeast Lincoln, Nebraska during the 1960's and 70's - and were male - you more than likely had one goal in life:  To grow up real tall and end up somehow playing basketball at Lincoln Northeast High School for the legendary Ed Johnson.  
     Oh, there were tons of rumors that filtered down to the elementary school level - most notably that one had to get a crew cut in order to make his squad (which was never substantiated, save for a blurry picture of LNE baller legend Terry Novak sporting same in

the newspaper)  but that never deterred anyone.  We all spent hours out on our oil-stained driveways - after our parents' moved automobiles out the way - mimicking the skills of our local high school heroes.  The starting five of the local high school received our imaginary passes, faked out the likes of the Links, Knights, eventually the hated Spartans, and Omaha's Central High Eagles with quick moves, and never failed to hit the winning shot.  Why?  Because that's what they did.  
     The five players with ghost-like qualities were Tom Novak (Terry's older brother), Danny Cook (a dark-haired fireplug of a player), Greg Wright (who actually lived just down the street from me, and was kind of like living next to Bob Devaney but only on a much smaller scale, celebrity-wise), Maury Damkroger (who ended up playing football for the U of N and got a couple years with the NFL's Patriots, and....and....in a nod to passing years and faded memory I've forgotten the fifth player.  John Strain, maybe?  Not sure.  I think it was Strain now that I think about it a little.
     Of course very few of us ever had enough athletic ability to play for Ed; certainly none of my close friends ever did.  The most we did was sit high in Pershing Auditorium with our homemade scorecards and mark off made free throws and rebounds from players wearing the black and white such as Tom Westover and Bruce Maske.  They were larger than life god-like figures to kids like us who were around ten years old.  And they seemed impossibly old and mature, those boys who were all of seventeen probably.  Seventeen.  But that's how they seemed.  
     And Coach Ed.  He would roam the sideline in front of the Rocket bench, trademark rolled

up program in his hand and would generally try to intimidate every living thing within a square mile or so with his intense facial expressions.  Those expressions ranged from relatively intense to downright nuclear whenever one of his players would take a bad shot or deviate any smidgen from the Rocket Way.  Then he would slide step down the line, wave his program at the next one in - substituting for the on-court offender - and then move slightly as the new substitute would jump off the bench, tear open his snapped-shut white top and head to the scorer's table to check in.  
     The closest I ever got to playing for Coach Johnson was a tryout for the sophomore team when he came in to watch us.  I know my reaction was - and I think I can speak for the other kids there - was:  Oh.  My.  Goodness.  It's.  Him.  That's Coach Johnson.  Right.  Over.  There.
     This was the person we had all loved/feared all those years and he was watching us take our first steps towards possibly having the distinct honor of shedding sweat for him and for the "Glory Of Our Team."  I don't remember much of that "tryout" except that I retrieved a tipped pass from going out of bounds.  Otherwise I don't think I touched the ball, and certainly didn't score.  Not that it mattered much.  I didn't even make my junior high 9th grade team, so the chance of doing that at a higher level with three times the competition to beat out wasn't likely.  I was the last person cut off the sophomore squad by the aforementioned legendary Tom Novak who, on a spring day two years in the future would also cut me off the reserve baseball team.  I have no doubt both deletions were deserved - the former more than the latter, probably - but it earned Tom a place on my "list" for years to come.  
     Years have passed and I've not played basketball anywhere - let alone a memory-filled

driveway - for years and years and Coach Ed has long since passed away.  But his memory for me has remained pristine, having never got on my "list."  He still roams the sideline in my mind, his program spun into an impossibly tight cylinder, his gaze still eliciting fear and respect from all who failed to seek basement refuge from its radar-like sweep.  If St. Peter has a starting five, they're probably running "lines" right now and executing to perfection that drill where the man with the ball heads to the basket, pivots, and hands off to the trailing man for an easy off-the-backboard layup.  I saw that 1,000 times growing up and remember it still.
     Coach Ed wouldn't have it any other way.  
     

If I Had Another Half Hour: A Second Eulogy For My Father

     Just short of three months ago, I eulogized my father.  It consisted mostly of relating to his mourners an event that had happened to me several years ago, with my intent being that hopefully it would bring comfort to them in that time as it did for me in mine.  I do not know how successful I was in that endeavor.  But in a form of psychological torture and self-examination that would fascinate a roomful or two of amateur Freudians, I find myself to this day at random times repeating over and over in my mind portions of that eulogy in - I'm guessing - some sort of weird attempt either to improve upon it or try to understand the event and my place in it.
     Would I do it differently?  Parts of it, sure. 

It was composed within a span of two or three days, and for the most part memorized in about half that time.  I do feel though that I spent too much time on myself and not nearly enough on the type of person Dad was.  Relating more memories of him would have shed more light on who he was and how his spirit tried to dance between  - and sometimes straight on through - the raindrops over the course of a lifetime.  So if I had another chance, this is what I'd say about him.
     My earliest memory of my father happened on his work mornings.  He and mom would be having breakfast in the illuminated kitchen, while I would be snuggled up in the living room chair, impossibly warm and safe, and alone with my deeply imprinting memories in the darkened room.  I would lay there, hearing their muffled conversations and the sounds of the radio, and smelling toasting bread and crisp cooked bacon.  All was well and safe and normal.  Eventually, he would get up and leave.  He and Mom would share a kiss at the front door and he'd be off.  I'd pretend to be asleep, but I saw and noticed it all.  And to this day I remember the smells, the chair, and their light making the darkness of the morning seem less deep.
     I remember the time that I came home crying from being bullied by one of the local toughs over something or some such, and after hearing about it off he went in socks and without shoes on my sisters green bike riding around the neighborhood looking for.....someone.  I don't remember even telling him who had done it, but I can still see him heading down the hill looking like he did and riding what he was on and showing the family flag in a comically protective way.
     I remember summer nights when - after a shower which made him smell so clean - he'd camp out in his recliner, one leg up and over the armrest with TV on and holding a bowl of soda crackers and milk.  I assume that strange combination is something he picked up while in the Army, but I never asked him that in order to find out.  I've never had the courage to try it to see what all the fuss was about, but it was a fairly regular snack of his so he must have found it palatable.  Soon the bowl would be empty, the show he was watching would be over, and ten o'clock would come.  He would get up, leaving an empty chair and head off to bed.  That chair sat in the exact spot where years later he would leave this earth, and I think of that often:  How time and locales and events and segments of lives intersect and overlap on each other, as if they were meant to do so.
     Once, after a very heavy rain, Dad went out to his garden to check the volume of rain that had been received in his new rain gauge.  This happened in the later years when his eyesight had begun to fail, and he misread how full the gauge was.  He excitedly came back in the house and announced that "We got ten inches!"  He then proceeded to call the local TV station with the news, which was then dutifully noted on the evening broadcast with the forecaster's disclaimer that went something like, "Although it is possible to have isolated local very heavy amounts of rain, ten inches is somewhat unlikely...."  I then asked Dad to show me on the gauge where the level he saw was and in reality it turned out to be about two inches if I remember right.  He felt awful and wanted to immediately call up the station and correct what he had said, but I told him just to let it go.  It was a much better story left as it was.  And I've no doubt the mischievous side of him liked the chaos that got created with his mistake!
     Towards the end of his life and well after he had started his journey home, Dad was sleeping in a bed in the living room that sat directly on the spot of his old chair where he rested and ate his crackers and milk so many years ago.  I was in a nearby chair, trying to get some rest myself while at the same time trying to keep an eye on Dad to make sure he didn't try to get up and move about without help.  I nodded off and awoke to see him standing by the bed.  "Woah, woah!  Where you going?" I said.  "To the bathroom," he replied.  I went over to him and explained that he didn't need to and that he was fine where he was.  "I'm going," he said determinedly.  "Fine" I said, relenting.  He was in his house that he paid for and he was entitled to try it one last time.   
     I held his arm as he tried to move.  An inch at a time, we moved about two feet in total when his legs gave out and he fell slowly to the ground with me holding and bracing his fall.  It took all of my physical and emotional strength to lift him up and back into bed.  I got him back under the covers, kissed him on the head and watched him go off to sleep.  It was the last meaningful interaction I would have with him; the next day he was raspy and unconscious and unresponsive and had gone on to a misty mid-point place where peace and suffering fight for equal footing and equal control.  We had taken our last walk together.
     The passage of time has helped me gain some control over my own misty place, but I can feel my own grief deepening as the days pass.  And I don't know where it is going to bottom out, or even if it will.  I am now left with a newer chair sitting on the same spot where his old one was years ago and his bed was recently.  I sit there and think of moments in the past and try to hear his voice as it sounded in that illuminated kitchen years ago; I think of that old bike which still sits in the garage and fight the urge to go out in the cold night and touch it; I want to find that old rain gauge, run my fingers over the marks and try to figure out how he misread it.  I want, I want, I want....
     But these words are about you Dad, not me.  You are there in each sentence and you dance and jump when I try to turn a phrase over and over in my mind.  You make me pause and erase and re-do what I thought was perfect and find that it was a lot less so.  You are still there in these words and our lives and in my misery.  And you shall never, ever leave.