The edict came down from my personal editor of 41 years.
“It’s time to retire that line.’’
“You mean the one about going to the Coldplay concert?’’
“No, the one about marriage.’’
I protested: “But it’s one of my favorite punchlines.’’
“It’s old, it needs to go, and it never was funny.’’
The one-liner had been used often, dating back to our church’s marriage preparation seminars. Mary and I would be conducting the segment on communication for prospective married couples when I would try to inject some levity: “Remember fellas, first you marry them, then they turn on you.’’
For guys who see the world much differently than women, this often was humorous. For women, Mary called it “demeaning.’’ I just considered it poking fun at the differences between the genders. The only thing she poked was my ribs – a not-so-subtle message to cool it.
But like the polyester pants I wore in the 1980s, before marriage, that line will be tossed out too.
It got me reminiscing about some of my favorite punchlines:
Sleep In Heavenly Peace can be a mouthful
This organization builds and delivers free beds to needy children. Some sleep on a couch, perhaps a floor mattress, or in worst-case scenarios, a pile of clothes. Our Rochester chapter has delivered 1,257 wooden-frame beds to the most vulnerable children.
We turn lumber into slumber by sanding wood, then building headboards, siderails and slats. The finished components are dipped in a vat of steel wool and vinegar (seals the wood and discourages bed bugs).
Repacking the trailer, after four hours of toiling and sweating under the sun, requires some precision but mostly urgency because the volunteers want to go home. The vinegar vat is emptied into 30-plus buckets with lids, then they are stowed on a trailer.
“I’ve got to have the partial buckets to balance the load!’’ exhorted our operations manager, Dave. “I know there are partial buckets here.’’
Our president, Shawn, wrestled with a full bucket as he passed it to Dave. The bucket got stuck, the lid flew up, and Dave, with mouth open, took about half a bucket of vinegar to the face. Dave was spitting vinegar and coughing when Shawn announced: “I found the partial!’’
Fireworks on the pitching mound
Rick Sutcliffe pitched for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Cleveland Indians, Baltimore Orioles and St. Louis Cardinals in an 18-season career, but his funniest moment might have come in the early 1990s with the Chicago Cubs.
Reds slugger Paul O’Neill smashed a home run off Sutcliffe, triggering a celebratory fireworks display in Cincinnati. The next hitter, Eric Davis, crushed another homerun. Flash! Bang! Boom! More fireworks.
As pitching coach Billy Connors walked toward the mound, the G-rated version is that Sutcliffe began yelling for him to back to the dugout, that the game was under control, and that he should tell manager Don Zimmer to cool down.
Cubs teammate Mark Grace said Connors humorously defused any further F-bombs: “I know you have everything under control, Rick. I just wanted to give that guy running the fireworks a little more time to reload.’’
The teacher and the first-grade movie buff
I’m not surprised my son works in Los Angeles as a driver for The Voice. From an early age, he loved movies, performed in plays and earned a film and video editing degree from Drexel University.
He was fascinated by sharks, loved Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, and talked about movies and movies and movies.
As a first-grader, he cornered his wonderful classroom teacher, a lovely Christian fellow named Tim Behnke, before morning announcements.
“Mr. Behnke. Mr Behnke! MR. BEHNKE. I was watching The Ten Commandments last night.’’
Behnke’s mind stood at attention. He had never had a first-grader discuss The Ten Commandments, let alone comment on the contents, but immediately his head swirled with images of Charlton Heston, flowing robes, burning bushes and the Red Sea parting.
“Ðid you know,’’ Liam said with an air of disbelief, “that you need to smear animal blood over your doorway so the Angel of Death will pass over you?’’
Behnke said his jaw dropped and he didn’t how to respond as the 6-year-old boy peered upward through his Harry Potter glasses, awaiting a response.
“But the first thing that came to my mind – there is no way the classroom hamster goes home with this kid.’’
Morristown native Jim Holleran is a retired teacher and sports editor from Rochester. Reach him at jimholleran29@gmail.com or view past columns under “Reflections of River Rat’’ at https://hollerangetsitwrite.com/blog/
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