MY DAD THE ENTERTAINER

                                                

 I think my dad thought he was a modern day Confucius because he had a saying for everything. The biggest difference, between dad and the old Chinese scholar, was that most of the sayings from Confucius made sense. Dad would say things like, “I intend to live forever and so far, so good” or “a clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.” My mother would just roll her eyes, and shake her head, whenever he would get on one of his philosophical tirades. He, on the other hand, would smirk and shake his finger at you like listen up my son. He was like Donald Trump, without any money. Speaking of money, he told me once, “Always borrow money from a pessimist. They don’t expect it back, anyway.”

When I was a young man, and out cruising for chicks until three in the morning, he would ask me where I was last night. When I told him I was at a Bible Study class, he would tell me, “Good one,” and make a mark in the air with his finger. “I was born at night but it wasn’t last night,” he would say. “So start over or I’ll have to refresh your memory for you.” I swear the guy never slept because you could have come home, flown into the upstairs bedroom window on the wings of angels, and he would still have heard you.

I love good quotes, and frequently read books of them, or go on the Internet. It’s hard to come up with new ones nowadays because these wise old codgers, and doting women of days gone by, have been spouting them for five hundred years, and there “Is only so many ways to skin a cat,” and there I go again. I have often wondered if Ben Franklin’s wife didn’t tell him, once in a while, to “Go fly a kite,” with his constant stream of wisdom. Come to think of it, he did fly a kite and maybe, after he got hit by lightning a few times, he did shut up.

My mother only had one saying that I remember, and it was, “What was left unsaid, was best said.” When she would say that to our dad, he would scratch his head and give her his best Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy imitation—which would get all of us kids laughing and stifle poor mom in her tracks. “Yes, my dear,” he would say, smacking his lips and trying to sound like W. C Fields. “That would have been best left unsaid.” I remember my brother once, when he was about twelve, raising his hand at the supper table and asking to go to the bathroom. Dad said, “You may—but not there—go in the biffy with that.”

Yes, dad was an entertainer first and foremost, but you know what—we all loved him for it, and so did mom. There was never a dull moment in our home. I remember talking to you once before about the difference between a house and a home. Our house was a shack by the railroad tracks, but our home was a vaudeville theater, filled with laughter and love. Of the eight siblings in our family, there has been one divorce in fifty years. Dad and Mom should be so proud. So, for now, I think I’m done because, “A conclusion in my life is the place where I got tired of thinking,” and I am.