{"id":250,"date":"2007-01-26T09:50:56","date_gmt":"2007-01-26T13:50:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.summerofjim.com\/2007\/01\/26\/laughing-with-my-dad\/"},"modified":"2007-01-26T09:54:24","modified_gmt":"2007-01-26T13:54:24","slug":"laughing-with-my-dad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/?p=250","title":{"rendered":"Laughing with my Dad"},"content":{"rendered":"

I love music.\u00a0 It’s ironic… \u00a0now that I have a car with a good<\/em> radio, I have decided to drive in silence\u00a0during my 55 minute journey from Woodbury to Norwalk and back. <\/p>\n

My day is filled with sound of one type or another.\u00a0 Yes, music; but mostly it’s the spoken word.\u00a0 Incessant sound.\u00a0 So my drive in quiet solitude has become a cherished part of my daily routine.\u00a0 Thoughts come and go, ideas drift in… old stories, old conversations.\u00a0 Or they can be new… looking for a better way to describe a young Chianti I had just tried.\u00a0 I think of things that make me sad… and I think of things that make me happy.<\/p>\n

And last night I thought of something that made me laugh… laugh\u00a0hysterically… which is perfectly OK.\u00a0 Laughing out loud in an outrageous fashion, when driving alone… <\/em>is like singing out loud alone (off key).\u00a0 Who cares?\u00a0 Not that I have ever worried too much about laughing out loud outrageously<\/em> in public (which will be in evidence\u00a0later in\u00a0this story).<\/p>\n

This is how it starts…<\/p>\n

In February of 1962 my Father took my Mother on a trip\u00a0around-the-world.\u00a0 Their journey began in Hawaii, proceeded to Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Manila, Thailand, India, Israel, Greece, Spain… and maybe London & Paris, too.\u00a0 Official photography for the trip was a shared responsibility.\u00a0 The “simple camera” was relatively new and the entire trip was shot in slides (favorite shots would be turned into photos later).<\/p>\n

My Father also brought a new camera along… perhaps as back-up.\u00a0 The instamatic<\/em> may have been shared; but this one was his<\/em>.\u00a0 It was a Minolta or Minox… I forget which; but the key here was its small size.\u00a0 It was smaller than a six inch ruler & no wider than a stout cigar.\u00a0 At the time it was the smallest commercial camera by miles.\u00a0 It looked like something 007 would use.\u00a0 The camera had a small tan leather case and a “watch chain” that you could clip to a belt loop and slip the camera into your pants’ pocket.<\/p>\n

Dad was proud of that camera.\u00a0 Although he never impressed me as being a “shutter bug.”\u00a0 <\/p>\n

If the camera was small… the film size was ridiculously<\/em> small.\u00a0 Micro film really.\u00a0 But he wasn’t shooting secret files purloined from the Kremlin… he was photographing the Taj Mahal.\u00a0 And since a slide is nothing more than a positive image of a negative… the size of Dad’s slides looked like a computer chip.\u00a0 So when his film was developed, we had to get a special projector, which had this magnifying attachment so that you could see an image from a decent distance away.<\/p>\n

Mom’s slides had no such difficulty… and I guess I must have seen her slides a half dozen times before we had the right equipment for Dad’s…<\/p>\n

We finally get to view Dad’s slides.\u00a0 I’m looking at shot after shot… Dad explaining this or that.\u00a0 And then we get to a staged\u00a0photo of Mom and Dad standing before a Thai Temple in Bangkok.\u00a0 Dad must have asked a passer-by to take the shot… Mom is in a light coloured sleeveless top and a skirt.\u00a0 She is standing at an angle facing Dad.\u00a0 Her feet are positioned in that classic pose… one foot slightly in front of the other, and pointed slightly out.\u00a0 She has a beautiful smile.<\/p>\n

My Father is wearing an English lisle polo shirt, a silk foulard tied around his neck, light grey tropical worsted slacks and cordovan penny loafers.\u00a0 He is facing slightly toward my Mother, and the empty leather camera case (having given the\u00a0camera to the passer-by\u00a0for the shot), attached by the\u00a0strap to his belt loop, was hanging about crotch level.<\/p>\n

My Dad takes a look at the slide and lets out a serious chuckle, “Jesus, it’s looks like I have my pecker on a leash<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

Then I crack out a laugh at this comment.\u00a0 My trouble is… I can’t stop laughing.\u00a0 And then of course Dad picks up his laughter pace, too.\u00a0\u00a0 And there the two of us were unable to call a halt to the laughing.\u00a0 Mom left the room saying if she stayed she was going to pee in her pants.<\/p>\n

That’s the way it was with me and my Dad.\u00a0 Boy could we laugh… and poor Mom would have to scurry from the room lest she pee in her pants.<\/p>\n

I thought about this story a couple of years ago… don’t ask me exactly how I arrived at the recollection.\u00a0 We were in Taos for Fan and Chipp’s Wedding… after the service we were gathered on the patio of this wonderful place trading stories… enjoying a drink, taking in the view… And I am sure that Paul and I got to talking\u00a0and it was probably mentioned that\u00a0it would have been great for Mom and Dad to have been there, too… <\/p>\n

I guess that’s how I connected to the “pecker on\u00a0a leash”.\u00a0 And geeze, if I laughed hard with my Dad… I laughed harder<\/em> with Paul.\u00a0 Because I had a much better understanding of the improbability<\/em>.\u00a0 And the more I thought about it… the harder I laughed.\u00a0 The clear image of that photograph came back in highest detail… Mom and Dad, although casually dressed, dressed impeccably… <\/em>standing in front of a magnificent Holy Shrine… and it looked like my father’s penis is hanging out of his fly, and<\/em> it was on a wire tether.\u00a0 This wasn’t like some smart assed teenager giving the finger <\/em>in a sneaky way or something.\u00a0 This was my Father!!\u00a0 How improbable is this?\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Eventually all my laughing gets the attention of others on the patio.\u00a0 And I mean I am laughing<\/em>! Pictures were taken.\u00a0 It looks like I might be in pain, or maybe just threw up.\u00a0 Paul’s expression is one of bemused toleration.\u00a0 If anybody asks me about the shot, I’m going to tell them that Paul had just farted (or peed in his pants) and I was creating a ruckus to cover his embarrassment.\u00a0 Yeah, I think that’s a good bluff.<\/p>\n

Last night, the silence of my drive was broken… like I had hit a pocket of turbulence on Route 136.\u00a0 The picture of my Father and Mother standing in front of that Temple in Thailand came back to me… And I laughed once again… harder and harder.\u00a0 This time it was about the caption.\u00a0 <\/em>I mean sure, it’s a funny shot; but maybe only funny if you knew what to look for.\u00a0 <\/em>And even if you knew what to look for, the hysterical part was the “caption”… the name\u00a0Dad had coined off-the-cuff… pecker on a leash.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

My Father was a master at the Title.<\/em><\/p>\n

So… I had a good laugh with my Dad last night.\u00a0 Pecker on a Leash?\u00a0 Isn’t that a Pub in London?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love music.\u00a0 It’s ironic… \u00a0now that I have a car with a good radio, I have decided to drive in silence\u00a0during my 55 minute journey from Woodbury to Norwalk and back. My day is filled with sound of one … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}