So you get this post for now…
as stated in previous posts, I have basically 2 best
friends. One is a cousin, the other I consider a brother. But my cousin
naturally I have known all my life, and was not only asked to be his best man
over all his other friends and family (really? Me? I guess…) but also asked to
be the godfather to his (currently) only son nick. Its one of those things that
keeps me hangin on to this planet, even though death is the cherry on top of my
continued depressed years..
Of course I am talking about jonny mac. MR. Jonny joke
himself. (Now I gotta expand on that but I am not sure how they all went
over the years. Basically a jonny joke had a start, and an end but no
justification between them. If I have to edit this I will, but for the most
part, you’d get a setup and a punchline with no interconnectedness between
them. (interconnectedness is a word apparently. I think it was a Gatesism they
let MSWord have.) for a horrible example: "what did the duck say? Give up? Spam and Beans!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaahahahahaha…." We all were kids once. But his were
those jokes of legend.)
We have had some crazy fun times over the years. The most
innocent of times to the daringly “how the heck did we just get thru that space
between that truck that just drove by us and that parked car on that road past gramma’s
on the right that is now one way the other way” street… the road trips. The sneeze-cough
at yacco’s… mmmmm yacco’s!.... the bug we both saw screaming at us right before it
slimed the windshield… “why am I yelling”… watching me run anytime… and
watching me run on video after punching jmac on the football field… among other
millions and millions of times we had. We just “get” each other and have a fun
time about ourselves.
But in fact the most innocent were the funniest, well, to me:
“the spaghetti incident:”
We went to the salvation army (I’m prolly wrong, maybe it
was saint stephen’s or somewhere else… but I wanna say salvation army in Harrisburg
or maybe it was st pat’s cathedral basement, but the place is irrelevant) with
my aunt rita for a spaghetti dinner. The spaghetti was great, but it had quite
the soupy sauce, making it slippery as a banana skin on an oil slick.
As I, at maybe 5 or 6 years old, was walking back to my seat
from the buffet line, I slipped the levelness of the plate to the right a bit
and you’d have thought I was on a ship at sea the way it went flyin', splattering all over the linoleum tiled floor. I felt horrible, as
aunt rita had paid with her own money to take her nephews out to dinner and lo
and behold, mine was on the floor. I started to clean up and jonny mac was
behind me.
He decided to help clean up the spaghetti dinner on the
floor with me, aunt rita, and assorted other folks. But as he did so his
levelness of his plate was teetering as well, and off the plate it went. It was
as if he said “here, folks, you go clean mine up, I’m gonna help pete.”
They gave us new helpings and it was great pasta, but its
one of those memories I’ll never forget.
“peeing over the car / 5 minute fart ride from jersey”
My family is tremendous. Lee huge. Tremendously huge. My father
is one of 14, and for whatever reason, whether visiting or vacationing (giving
the parents a vacation, rather) we were in mount holly, NJ at my uncle mike and
aunt patty’s house. Patty is the first born of the 14, and she was as stern as
they came for aunts and uncles. She was one you didn’t wanna mess with for
every reason under the sun, and I had a slight fear of her for years. People in
the family may say that was a lie, that I shouldn’t say that because she has
since passed away, but in my case its my opinion of her and as awesome as she
was, she always had a stick up her ass. One time as a child, once, I remember
her with a heart. I cried at her house from being homesick and she let me call
my mom as if I was getting the last call from prison. And she held me telling
me it was ok. Other than then, she was “one of those aunts”.
In general with people like that, they tend to marry their
opposite, and in fact uncle mike couldn’t be more unlike aunt patty. He was
fun. He was the one in the family that you expected a birthday card from, yet
his was homemade from ammunition, err, pics of you he had stored on his 35mm
stealth camera film he had taken over the year. And each year it wasn’t as much
fun awaiting your birthday until you got that card in the mail. And each one
was funnier than the last. The guy made the first cast of Saturday night live
look like the local improv group in batswanaland. He was a phenom of comedic
writing and talent, and he is still dangerously funny on email today. What he
comes up with you just don’t know where it comes from, but you know who wrote
it without looking at the email address. He has a thought process and style all
his own, not just on paper, and I love him dearly.
(his comedic emails got me into writing, so all these blogger
deals are his fault!)
But like the “angry rule” of bruce banner’s, don’t get him
drunk. Unless you have the steel toe of kara (hear the tenor and bass angels
singing now? “aaaaAAAAAAAaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAA The. Steel. Toe. Of. Kara… coming to
a theater near you…”) to bring him to his knees… another story entirely. (I guess
my uncle was right, I need a hyperlink or two to go along with this blog,
ehh??? Choices choices…)
Uncle mike was given the task of driving jonny mac and I back
to Harrisburg when we were 6 or 7, maybe younger. In fact possibly younger. My memory
is slightly lost, but we were kids nonetheless. And as kids on a 2 hour ride
back home, you need to use the restroom here and there, more often than your
adult drivers. And what fervor and rigor our urine used to have. I guess it’s
like a hose. The smaller the pinhole, the stronger the stream…
We pulled over along the side of the highway and jmac and I let
loose. We arched our backs back, held our little wieners in hand (in 30 years, weren’t
they supposed to grow or something?) and streamed all over the side of the
grasses of the highway. Not just down, oh no… we peed up. High. Like touching
the clouds high. And it rainbow-arched, for all the passing cars to see, and of
course for uncle mike’s stealth photo opportunity. Yes, this exact moment was
captured on film. Where the pic is I have no idea, or do i…? I really don’t. I wish
I did cause right here would be the most appropriate place for it in
perpetuity.
We laughed and chuckled about it and piled back into the
car.
-----this particular story may be an amalgam (thanks movie “parenthood”
for that word) of other trips we took with uncle mike but for me the 5 minute
fart and peeing higher than the car sorta fits together in my memory. The aforementioned
human map could probably point out which mile marker it happened on, but that’s
jonny.-----
And so the car ride rolled on. We both musta had something
gassy to eat along the ride home, or back in mount holly, because the ride back
was one of those rides you never forget (again)
One of us farted.
Naturally the windows had to be cracked due to the now green
hued air in the car. It was poisonous not just to the lost nose hairs, but if
that gas had gotten out, it would have looked like the aftermath of Hiroshima… Oppenheimer
would have been impressed with these farts.
Once the clock hit 4minutes, 59 seconds, the second later
the other farted. And naturally the windows had to be rolled down again. It was
literally like clockwork.
From the front seat you heard “roll ‘em down… jeez’s chr - what
the heck did you eat? ok… now roll ‘em up…”
And 5 minutes later on the nose, pun intended, yet literally
as well…
“roll ‘em down” … … …
This was a 2 hour ride. I am not sure the car manufacturers tested
the handles of their windows as much as mike’s were tested that day, but to say
they had a workout was an understatement, all the while jmac and I were
laughing hysterically in the back seat. . .
When we finally arrived at gramma’s house to meet up with
our parents, our faces looked like the clock faces of a certain Salvador Dali
work. And our arms could compete with Arnold Swartzenegger for the Mr. Olympia competition due to the fact that
the windows had to be cranked in those days.
So there you have it.
A pinprick of times I have spent with my cousin.
And of all the times I remember, I laugh at those early ones
the most. Evidently, 30 years later, I remember them fondly as if it were
yesterday.
“and now {I cry} for those innocent days”
III
