Caleb's Post

This post is for Caleb...and you'll understand why eventually. Hang in there.

Yesterday, Mike and I were talking about how my mom could never tell a really funny joke. Well, ok...here's the story. We were waiting at a red light by the interstate and while we watched, this man in a Corvette (going about 400 mph) swooped around this pick up truck and narrowly (it seemed to me) escaped firey carnage by merging back onto the interstate with seconds to spare before the lane ended. Anyways, I looked at Mike and said:

Me: Do you know what the difference between a Corvette and a cactus is?

Now, Mike's heard this joke about a thousand times and I know he remembers it by the way he smiles when I ask the question. But it's a cute joke and so he plays along.

Mike: No...what?

Me: On a cactus, the pricks are on the outside.
(My apologies to Uncle Bob who owns a Corvette and is actually a very nice man)

I told Mike that the cactus joke was the only funny joke that my mom was ever able to tell me...at least properly. Then Mike and I started talking about her and laughing because whenever she had a really funny joke to tell, she'd start it out good but because she knew how funny it was, she'd stop and laugh in the middle and could never spit out the punchline because she was always laughing too hard. Usually it didn't matter whether we heard the joke because we'd all be laughing at her laughing too hard to tell the joke. It wasn't just jokes that she had this trouble with. Particularly funny stories about us were often told in the same fashion - with it taking forever to find out the point of the story because you'd have the wait until she could laugh her way through to the end. She had a great laugh. Anyway, one of the stories she could never make it all the way through was the one I'm about to tell you now.

When he was very young, my nephew had a real thing for Poke-mon. He was a fanatic. I imagine he was six or seven-ish. I was still in college but I was home for some reason. Anyway, the first pokemon movie came out and Mom and I decided that we'd take Cal to see it. He was SO excited, he was very well behaved and really enjoyed the movie. The first movie was about these scientists who were cloning pokemon and these cloned pokemon were isolated off on their own little clone-pokemon-reject island or something. Anyway, the REAL pokemon somehow stumble upon them (hey...it's been 10 years! Give me a break - I don't remember details). The pokemon start to fight each other because the REAL pokemon won't accept the CLONED pokemon because they're different but they are genetically the same, so it's just a big stand-off between them. Finally in the end, they had to band together as brothers to save the day. Anyway, being about 20 or 21-ish, I naturally knew EVERYTHING and was very smug about it, right? I was very impressed about how they had incorporated this message of tolerance into a kid's movie so smoothly. After it was over, we were ready to leave the movie theater and I turned to Mom and Caleb and said, "Cal, did you get the message that the movie was trying to tell you?" And Caleb said, "Yes. Don't fight somebody with your same powers because you can't win!" My mom thought that was about the funniest thing she ever heard. The first thing she did when she got home was tell my dad about what Caleb had said...well, she tried. I think I ended up telling the story because she was laughing so hard she was crying.

And so, for all the joy he brought my mother for the fifteen years they shared space on this Earth together - this post is for my favorite nephew, Caleb Harris. God love'em...he hasn't changed a bit since then. I hope he never does.