LAUGHTER AND TEARS

Humor can be as simple as a drop of dew falling from above to hit you between the eyes, or as complicated as any boolean equation devised per Einstein (OK, I know it was actually George Boolean who figgered out before Wright City that a logical calculus of truth values exists in computer science, but lets face it, that ain't "humorous" by any standard).

Getting it down to the simplest equation, my Dad was the funniest person I have ever known.

His humor was basic, relevant, and near bout a gut bustin' riot as I could ever imagine.

My favorite memories of Dad's humor were those times where he would start to tell a joke and could never get to the punch line. Dad would be so overcome by the hilarity (to him) of the joke, that he would begin to uncontrollably laugh, shake, cry, get red faced, and generally be unable to continue. For reasons I can't fully explain, it had the same effect on me. Without having a clue what the joke was about, I would begin to "laugh, shake, cry, get red faced" (you get the idea). It was just humor in its purest, most funny form, to see Dad so personally and emotionally involved in a play on words that we call a "joke".

Why did Dad have the ability to enjoy such simple thoughts to such an extreme of pleasure?

You would have had to know my Dad to know that he was a simple man. In all things, he evaluated life in its simplest terms:

1. What is the minimum needed to accomplish a task
2. What is the most economically efficient way to survive
3. What is the TRUTH (Dad didn't have the time or patience for "window dressing" on anything
4. And most important, he was irreverent about what anyone else in the world thought about anything you can imagine. His only values were his personal values about anything on earth

If you thought you had accomplished an awesome task or made a purchase of immense proportion, Dad's standard comment was, "Cute". If you were basking in the glory of your most recent relevation of thought, Dad would in a couple of words put it all in perspective and clearly let you know that maybe you had not considered the grand scheme of things (slammed your butt back to that which really matters another words).

I miss my Dad in more ways than I can count, but among those are my longing to once again enjoy his soul satisfying humor that made the world a more pleasurable place by his presence.