Leron's call
Oh shit, it'd been so long since I wrote anything I was this close ---><--- to forgetting my password to blogger. Alas, my trusty memory came through once more. So.. awesome thing happened tonight. Phone at my parents' house rings. I answer. My Dad answers at the same time in another room. A man on the other end starts into an anecdote immediately and it takes me some twenty seconds or so to figure out it was my uncle Leron. The guy is hilarious. Imagine watching old-school comedy where everything is a witty one-liner that you have to catch. One of his lines was, "you know guys, I'm getting sick of winter. These grey days and everything--nothing to do, being stuck inside all the time. I'm sick of it. The other day I took a water pill just so I'd have a place to go."
My Dad's humor used to be so similar. Now, (wow, don't think I've ever disclosed this on my blog before, but) my dad is suffering from alzheimers and he's just not the same as he once was. But talking to Leron totally brought back some of my old Dad. Perhaps I heard my Dad's humor in the things that Leron was saying. Perhaps it was the clarity that my Dad would show for a few seconds as he'd recall an anecdote from their childhood as well. Perhaps it was just hearing my father laugh so much. But it was awesome and made me feel like for a moment it wasn't like it is.
Last Wednesday, I talked to a girl I've not talked to in seven years. She was the cute girl I met from Russell County that I took to my senior prom. Now she's getting her Master's and a husband on Block Island later this summer. But it had been seven years, seven years... that's a long time. So clearly both of us had grown up a little bit. We weren't talking about things we did at the lake like we did when we were 17 (15 respectively) but we were talking about colleges, loves, enlightenments, travels abroad, and perhaps most seriously of all.... alzheimer's disease. Her Dad died from alzheimer's a few years ago and hearing her talk about the whole experience, all of which happened during that gap of time where I didn't talk to her, was huge for me. Never before have I been able to talk to someone my own age who understood the ramification it has on someone (the one with the disease or the family member). It hurt. It felt freeing. She's got a real humor about it all that I don't have, that I can appreciate, but that doesn't suit me quite yet. I'm on the front side of an experience and she's on the back side of it. It's different. But to be able to explain.... to candidly speak to someone who could understand the senselessness of it all.... how nothing ever happens for a reason. It just happens. I'm happy to report that I came away from that conversation with an altered attitude about whatever experience I'll have later on in life. It's been weird lately--but in a good way. I don't want to say anymore about this topic.
But I will address the way I use the word "weird" too much in speech and text of late. It's been this way for about the past year. Some people overuse the word "like," Anthony Winchester for example. But for me, it's "weird." Please, if you have any ideas, give me words that I can substitute for "weird." I need something that I can use as an expression... like if you say to me, "did you see the way she looked at him?" I'd say, "yeah, weird." I need something I can just use an expression. I need suggestions.
So I'm going on a secret advertising campaign that in my head will revolutionize my campus. I'm going to say nothing more because when this idea totally flops, I don't anyone to call me on it. But, when the idea succeeds like a mother, I want to be able to point back to this obscurity and say to all the doubters... "boo yah."
Oh, and Chuck Norris humor is suddenly in. What's with it?
Sidenote: in late-November, I tried to tell my Sigma Chi Tiger Wood's story and it bombed. I didn't even make it to the punch line. For anyone who has heard this story, you know it's about damned near my best. Which brings me back to my uncle Leron.... how do you get funny like that?
Words for the musical explorer... Neutral Milk Hotel. Communist Daughter.
Friday night I went to the Prism Concert by WKU's Music Department. Awesome. Somewhere between my daydreaming during the piece by the cellists... thinking of Florence... ah, the night in Florence and then the gospel singing from the center of Van Meter Hall to the Steel Drums in front of the stage and the sway in every person's shoulder in the audience to the curtain drawing back and revealing the symphony orchestra in all their elegance, I realized, this is good stuff.
For a future blog idea, when I remember my password the next time, perhaps I'll tell you about Thursday night and the secret to a happy marriage that I discovered. But in the meantime, I'll be listening to Neutral Milk Hotel and thinking about one-liners that will someday make me appear funny to my nephew.
My Dad's humor used to be so similar. Now, (wow, don't think I've ever disclosed this on my blog before, but) my dad is suffering from alzheimers and he's just not the same as he once was. But talking to Leron totally brought back some of my old Dad. Perhaps I heard my Dad's humor in the things that Leron was saying. Perhaps it was the clarity that my Dad would show for a few seconds as he'd recall an anecdote from their childhood as well. Perhaps it was just hearing my father laugh so much. But it was awesome and made me feel like for a moment it wasn't like it is.
Last Wednesday, I talked to a girl I've not talked to in seven years. She was the cute girl I met from Russell County that I took to my senior prom. Now she's getting her Master's and a husband on Block Island later this summer. But it had been seven years, seven years... that's a long time. So clearly both of us had grown up a little bit. We weren't talking about things we did at the lake like we did when we were 17 (15 respectively) but we were talking about colleges, loves, enlightenments, travels abroad, and perhaps most seriously of all.... alzheimer's disease. Her Dad died from alzheimer's a few years ago and hearing her talk about the whole experience, all of which happened during that gap of time where I didn't talk to her, was huge for me. Never before have I been able to talk to someone my own age who understood the ramification it has on someone (the one with the disease or the family member). It hurt. It felt freeing. She's got a real humor about it all that I don't have, that I can appreciate, but that doesn't suit me quite yet. I'm on the front side of an experience and she's on the back side of it. It's different. But to be able to explain.... to candidly speak to someone who could understand the senselessness of it all.... how nothing ever happens for a reason. It just happens. I'm happy to report that I came away from that conversation with an altered attitude about whatever experience I'll have later on in life. It's been weird lately--but in a good way. I don't want to say anymore about this topic.
But I will address the way I use the word "weird" too much in speech and text of late. It's been this way for about the past year. Some people overuse the word "like," Anthony Winchester for example. But for me, it's "weird." Please, if you have any ideas, give me words that I can substitute for "weird." I need something that I can use as an expression... like if you say to me, "did you see the way she looked at him?" I'd say, "yeah, weird." I need something I can just use an expression. I need suggestions.
So I'm going on a secret advertising campaign that in my head will revolutionize my campus. I'm going to say nothing more because when this idea totally flops, I don't anyone to call me on it. But, when the idea succeeds like a mother, I want to be able to point back to this obscurity and say to all the doubters... "boo yah."
Oh, and Chuck Norris humor is suddenly in. What's with it?
Sidenote: in late-November, I tried to tell my Sigma Chi Tiger Wood's story and it bombed. I didn't even make it to the punch line. For anyone who has heard this story, you know it's about damned near my best. Which brings me back to my uncle Leron.... how do you get funny like that?
Words for the musical explorer... Neutral Milk Hotel. Communist Daughter.
Friday night I went to the Prism Concert by WKU's Music Department. Awesome. Somewhere between my daydreaming during the piece by the cellists... thinking of Florence... ah, the night in Florence and then the gospel singing from the center of Van Meter Hall to the Steel Drums in front of the stage and the sway in every person's shoulder in the audience to the curtain drawing back and revealing the symphony orchestra in all their elegance, I realized, this is good stuff.
For a future blog idea, when I remember my password the next time, perhaps I'll tell you about Thursday night and the secret to a happy marriage that I discovered. But in the meantime, I'll be listening to Neutral Milk Hotel and thinking about one-liners that will someday make me appear funny to my nephew.
posted by Derick | 10:53 PM
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