Happy Friggin' Mother's Day, Numb Nuts

Had lunch with the family today. My dad, stepmom, brother, aunt, uncle, my two favorite teenage cousins and I convened at my grandma's house for some KFC and fudge pies with ice cream. This is the cool family -- the family that likes to get together and laugh. My mom's family is the disfunctional one. Anyway, the good family likes to play board games on occasion, and today the game of choice was Scattergories. This is a really fun and challenging game, and it gets your creative wheels turning. For those of you who have never played, here's the general idea. There's a many sided die with a letter of the alphabet on each side. There are cards with categories like: flowers, politicians, girl's names, reptiles, capitals, etc. Someone rolls the die to determine what letter you're playing with, and if the letter is "C", for instance, you'd write "calla lily" for flower, "Clinton" for politician, "Carol" for girl's name, "crocodile" for reptile, etc. Everyone writes his own answers and when the round is over you read your answers out loud. If you have an answer no one else has, you get a point. The one with the most points wins. Well, during one round the letter was "N", and the category was "weapon." My sweet and proper stepmother was trying to write "numchucks", but it came out "nimnucks." When she read it out loud, I said, "That sounds like numb nuts! Har har harr!" And everyone busted out laughing. Pat - my stepmom - turned about five shades of red. And the whole family called her Numb Nuts for the rest of the afternoon. It wasn't until later, when I was having cheeseburgers at my mom's house, that I realized we didn't give Pat anything for Mother's Day, but we made fun of her and called her Numb Nuts. I called her up to make sure I hadn't hurt her feelings and she took it all in stride. I think she feels like part of the family now. Part of a weird family, a family that finds humor in the strangest things...

Like back about six years ago when my grandfather died and we were all hanging out at the funeral home for the wake. My grandmother sent my aunt to her house to get the "funeral tape" that Grandpa wanted played at his funeral. The tape wasn't labeled, and unbeknownst to my aunt and the rest of the family, we didn't know it was the wrong tape until the funeral director put it in the tape player and the music started playing through the piped-in stereo system. And what is the most inappropriate song that could possibly be played at a funeral? A song called "Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road." When we all heard it, we started dying laughing. The funeral director didn't see much humor in it. But wait! It gets even better! My aunt went back to my grandma's house to get the real funeral tape... The funeral director put it in the player, and this time it was definitely the right tape -- slow , sweet, melodic saxophone music. With all the people coming in to pay their condolences to the family, none of us paid any attention to the music on this funeral tape. The funeral director stopped my dad several times and asked my dad if he thought the music was appropriate for the situation, that it sounded a bit racy. My dad said yes, it was what his dad had chosen for his funeral. It wasn't until the wake was over, when we were all back at my grandma's house, that someone decided to play the funeral tape to see what had been playing back at the funeral home. It turns out it was Candy Dulfer's album Saxuality. Grandpa had only heard one of her songs and had someone make a copy of that whole album! The album gets really...um... sexy in certain parts. So we all got a big kick out of that. I'm sure some of the visitors to the funeral home walked in expecting to hear "Old Rugged Cross" and instead were greeted by the sound of a swingin' jazzy-pop saxophone. If you had known my Grandpa, you'd know that he would have gotten a big laugh out of that.

That's just ONE example of how my family finds humor in the strangest things. I will share more stories later.