THE HUMOR AND HUMANITY OF CHILDREN

Sometimes I wonder if children are aware of how funny they act or if it's on purpose. Do they realize how hilarious they can be and use it as a defensive mechanism against parents, or do they just say whatever comes to mind - spit it out without a second thought?

I’ve often contemplated this question during conversations with my children over the years. They could be hilarious at times, but I frequently considered if they were just having conversation, or if it was all planned out for my benefit.

 Little Ms. Quack-up

For instance, my daughter would often mispronounce things or use the wrong words at the worst times. When her great-grandmother was sick, she told her friends that she was suffering from semi-colon cancer. When her little brother was having round after round of strep throat, she explained to him that if he kept getting sick he would have to have his testicles removed. It would be sad, she said, if that happened.

Even in her confusion about the English language, my daughter cared for her family, especially as she got older. She spent an entire year sitting with her ailing grandmother and driving her to her dialysis appointments when she had so many other things she could have been spending time on. It was my daughter who talked me into allowing my youngest to give me his kidney when I was worried about the consequences for him. 

She is always reminding me to be careful when I go outside because I lose my balance and fall too often..."Don't forget your walker Mom." Or when I fall asleep without my CPAP mask..."Mom, if you  are going to sleep, put your mask on." it sounds like the simplest thing, but I can hear the concern in her voice and I know she cares about me.

 She's not always good at showing her compassion for people, but it's there, and I love her for her caring heart.

Mr. Hilarious

My oldest son would do and say anything to get out of doing what he was told. Sometimes I knew he was purposely trying to get my goat, but other times it just came unrestrained.

Son (5 years old): jumps out of the bathtub and runs to the living room. “Hey, Mom, do you see my butt? If I turn around, you can see my…” (Well, we know what we could see. It doesn’t bear repeating.)

Mom: “I’m gonna swat your…”

Son: runs back to the bathtub, dives in headfirst, and sprays water through the bathroom and out into the hallway.

Then there was the orange fight behind our apartment when we lived in Florida. A friend from next door had given us a bucket full of oranges a few days before; unfortunately, we couldn't eat them all before they went bad in the heat, so the two of them decided to use the oranges, under my friend’s direction, as bombs. The back yard, the patio, and every square inch of man and boy were covered in orange pulp. 

Afterward, when my friend came out dressed in his white shirt for work, Aaron jumped out from behind a bush and nailed him right in the chest with the biggest, most rotten orange in the bucket. Smelly orange pulp soaked through the white shirt, ran down the man's arms and legs, and dripped off his chin.

My friend was furious, but Aaron declared, "I'm having too much fun for my own good!"

 My friend may have started Battle of the Oranges, but Aaron was the clear winner. No punishment required.

The hilarity didn't stop when my son grew up. As a teenager, Aaron was just as cheeky as he had been as a child. One day, as we drove down a local street, we stopped at the crosswalk for a red light. Suddenly, he began to roll his head and slap himself on the chest repeatedly with the side of his hand. Then, he started to jerk side to side, forward and backward, as the driver of the car to our right stared, her eyes wide and her mouth dropping open. He could be so irreverent, but I couldn't help but laugh at her reaction. 

His understanding and concern for others were just as transparent as his humor. Even though he and his sister and little brother fought a lot when they were young, he would defend them to the bitter end... a fact which he demonstrated one afternoon in the courtyard of our apartment complex. 

The neighborhood bully had been picking on his younger siblings that day almost since the minute they stepped outside. Aaron could hear it from the window and went out to "take care of it" while I called the office about the issue. He asked the young man to leave his sister, who was catching the brunt of the teasing, alone and stop bothering her; the boy then laughed and went after her with a baseball bat. My son stepped quickly into action, yanking the bat away from the boy. He dropped it where he stood when the boy ran away, chased after the youngster, and held him up by his collar. He loudly warned the culprit as he dangled him high in the air that if he messed with his sister and brother again, he wouldn't be so nice the next time. He then dropped the boy to the ground and walked away. 

Of course, the police were summoned and came to my door shortly after the incident. After we explained the situation to the officer and children from the neighborhood told him what they saw, we were all surprised but relieved when he told my son he should be proud of defending his siblings and restraining himself as he did. 

"I don't know if I would have reacted the same way," the officer said to me. "I probably wouldn't have dropped the bat." A proud day!

Monsieur Flatteur

Then there is my youngest. I’m sure he was purposely trying to be funny when he came up with his amusing lines. Like his comment on a warm afternoon in 1998.

He and I were sitting in our living room watching television when a commercial came on for an exercise machine. The actress in the ad said she was fifty years old but looked no older than thirty, and it was all because of her workouts.

More to myself than to my son, I said, “Maybe I should get one of those so I can look like that when I’m fifty.” I was forty at the time, and he was six.

“Oh Mom,” he said, “you know you don’t need that thing.”

I thought a compliment was soon to follow, when I heard, “It’s nothing that a little liposuction and hair dye won’t fix.” 

I love you too, son.

And yet, this loving son showed his true colors when he volunteered to give me one of his kidneys and thus saved my life. Nothing I said or did could dissuade him. He was determined to take this on, and I will be forever grateful to him. It’s been more than 7 years of life that he bought me so far. I can't imagine a greater gift than that.

The Next Generation

Like his father, my grandson is a comedian in his own right. So many unbidden comments come from his unfettered mouth, it’s hard to choose what to tell and what to keep to myself.

I'll start with the day when, at a year old, the boy took my phone from my hand as I was talking to his father and began to rattle on about some serious subject in words only he could understand. When I asked for my phone back, he held his finger up at me without a backward glance as if to say, “Hold on a minute, Grandma, I’m not done.”

Just recently, he reminded me of his father's wit as we discussed a lesson about witchcraft in colonial Salem. As we read about the actions of the young girls in the courtroom who were reacting to a "spell," he dropped to the floor and began writhing about, arms flailing and eyes rolled back. Suddenly he began barking like a dog, to which his sister countered by meowing like a cat. It was quite entertaining. 

I was impressed, however, by his insight as we discussed an essay he is working on for his writing assignment. He was given 107 writing prompts to choose from; he chose to write about living forever. He understood and explained to me the difference between living forever and being immortal. To him, living forever could only happen if you were never mortally wounded or suffering from an incurable disease; immortality on the other hand means you can never die no matter what tragedy is heaped upon you.

He told me he would rather live forever with the chance that he could die because he could learn from events that happened in the past and the present to make a difference in the future and maybe save the human race. To be immortal would make it too tempting to take that knowledge and use it to conquer the world, which would only make the earth and its inhabitants eventually disappear.

There's that compassion again. Like family, like offspring.

B

AJ, Christmas 2018

The Cat's Meow

Becca has the sweetest personality,  even when her brothers are pestering her. She tells AJ when he's teasing her to leave her alone, but she says with a laugh and a big smile. Often, she will add a cat's growl and pretend to scratch at him, which only makes him pester her more. AJ is just as protective of her as his father was of his brother and sister.

 On the other hand, her two older brothers are a bit more to handle. They tend to pester her in other ways, like getting into her things and making too much noise when she's trying to watch something on TV. Then she doesn't hold back on her wrath. No foul words escape her mouth nor violence used, but the volume of her tone 

Becca has been coming to my home for several years now, just as her brother, AJ, did. She enjoys it most of the time. But there are times when I think she's bored or tired of the subject we are working on. She never complains, however, even when I ask her if she's doing okay. She just smiles and says, "It's okay, Grandma. Let's keep going." When the dog tries to climb into her lap while she is working, she very sweetly and gently nudges her until she gets down. Never a mean word; just a sweet smile and a quiet word.

MY FATHER, MY HERO

Daddy at 9 years old

 My father passed away February 28, 1983, at the age of 48.

He was a son, a husband, and a father. He was a grandfather to my children and those of my brothers and sisters and a friend to everyone who knew him. He may not have always been the best at any of those roles, but he was the kindest, most gentle, and most generous man I knew. 

Daddy was a farmer; he oversaw the fields and livestock on my Great Uncle Man’s (Manual Oyer) farm north of Fisher, Illinois. Farming that small 100-acre piece of land didn’t bring in the money we

needed for a family of eight, so Daddy also did what we called “Custom” farming – plowing, planting, and harvesting crops for other landowners who had too much work to complete on their own. He also shelled corn (I’ll have to explain that one to the current generation), baled hay, and ran a snowplow for the state in the winter.

We struggled as a family at times to find enough money to live on, but Daddy always provided, even if things got tight. He was a generous man, much to my mother’s chagrin. She would get upset when he would be “too generous”, like  when he gave $100 to an uncle to buy Christmas presents for his four children, and then handed Mom $20 to take care of their own six. He didn’t do it to slight us; he just couldn’t say no to family, or anyone for that matter. It would frustrate Mom to no end, but she understood Daddy’s heart, and there was no changing that. She said he had a marshmallow center. 

Daddy knew we would be getting gifts from our grandparents on both sides, as well as our great aunt and uncle, and their three daughters who lived next door, so he felt we would have enough. It didn’t bother us; we were happy with what we got.

Dad’s nonchalant attitude when things went wrong frustrated my mother sometimes…well, many times; his patience with people who took so much time to pay him for the work he did or just plain “forgot,”; his quiet way of convincing the children to get their chores done or stop fighting after she’d been yelling at us for an hour or more; him walking out of the room when she got mad at him. “She’ll get glad in the same clothes she got mad in,” he would say, while she would start throwing things at the window as he walked by. One time, she threw the eggs she going to use to make bread – the entire dozen – and then made me clean it up. Same thing with the dishes she knocked out of the cabinet. Thank goodness most of them were plastic!

Mom and Dad

Don’t get me wrong; Mama loved Daddy. She admired him for his patience, his work ethic, and his dedication to completing the task at hand. It was his patience and laissez-faire attitude about life in general that frustrated her. She wanted him to speak up more, to take action when he felt no action was needed. And it "put her out" that he could control the kids when she couldn’t. But she loved him, and she missed him after he passed. She mourned him for 35 years.

I remember a day when two of my male cousins, both teenagers, got into a fight in our front yard. Someone called Dad outside; he sauntered out to the porch and stood there watching and laughing for about ten minutes; the boys were throwing punches right and left, but few of them hit their target.

Finally, Dad had had enough; he walked out to the yard, grabbed both boys by the backs of their heads and slammed them together. As the boys dropped to the ground, moaning and holding their heads, Dad walked slowly back to his chair and his TV show. HE NEVER SPOKE A WORD!

Daddy was pretty quiet. He only spoke when it was absolutely necessary, and then in as few words as possible. I hated asking him what he’d like to drink with his dinner. It was the same routine every time. I would stand there waiting patiently for an answer and wondering if he'd heard me. I was afraid to ask again because to ask Dad the same question more than once could be a bit…awkward. “I heard ya the first time," he'd say. 

 After about five minutes, he’d ask, “Whatcha got?” So, I would name everything: water, coffee, tea, soda. After another five minutes of silence, he would say, “That sounds good.”

So, I’d ask Mom what she thought he would want, and she would tell me, "Give him some tea." Inevitably when I handed him his tea he would say, “I thought you had soda pop!” If I had taken him a soda, he would have wanted coffee.

Family birthday party

Family vacations with Dad were an adventure. We went to California once to visit my Aunt Pat and her family. Daddy didn’t like to stop…anywhere. So, when we had to gas up the car, everybody had better get out and use the facilities, because there wouldn’t be a chance again until the next fill-up.

Unless, of course, there was something Dad wanted to do or see, like stopping on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere so he could climb a small mountain or set up camp in the desert or next to an airport. Mom swore when those jets flew over us, she could see their teeth!

 While reminiscing about Dad with my sister-in-law, Christy, she mentioned a time soon after her oldest daughter was born when Dad showed up at her door and said, "Where is she?" He stood over the baby's crib and looked at her for several minutes, not speaking, and then turned around and walked out the door without another word.

A lot of people might have considered that rude behavior, but Christy understood that was just how Dad was. He didn't know how to put his feelings into words.  

Dad with his first grandchild

Even though I knew Dad loved me, the only compliment I ever got from him was when, lying in his hospital bed, he told me he was proud of me for going back to school to get my teaching degree. I always knew he loved me, but I was never really sure before that how he felt about me otherwise. I didn't ever want to disappoint him. 

Daddy knew he was going to die long before he told any of us. You see, a few years before Daddy passed away, he had to have two surgeries on his eye because a small tumor was growing out of the corner of it. Two times he had to go in and have the tumors removed. Soon after his second surgery, Daddy was wanting to go to Florida more often to visit his mother and convinced Mom they needed to move there. He told her he wanted her to look after his mother because she was getting older.

So, Mom agreed. She got a job at the local clinic in Cape Coral, they rented an apartment, and Daddy would go back and forth between Spring and Fall, coming home to plant the crops, do the custom work he did every year, and then harvest the crops before the snow fell. Then he headed back to Florida for the winter.

He did this for about three years, until the day he had a seizure while sitting with a friend in his truck. His friend drove him to the hospital in Gibson City, Illinois; from there they transferred him to Burnham Hospital in Champaign. He was diagnosed with inoperable brain tumors, three total, and was started on chemo and radiation immediately. He only had a couple of treatments before he put an end to that. He said they were only making him sick and weak, and he knew they weren’t going to work anyway.

How do I know that Daddy knew this was coming so long before we found out? Because the neurosurgeon that was attending him in Champaign said the doctors in Bloomington would have had to tell him that, because of the type of malignancy he had, those tumors in his eye would grow back again, and the next time they might grow back into his brain. I know because it was almost immediately after his last surgery that he pushed for Mom to move to Florida. I

know because he had a few car accidents (one took him over a bridge) that we can now contribute to the same type of seizure he had when he was with his friend.

 He never said a word. But he made sure that Mom and Grandma were together to watch over each other. I don’t know for sure, but I’m convinced he had a hand in my brother buying the farm from my great uncle’s daughters so they wouldn’t be burdened by it, and it would stay in the family.

Mom and Dad were in Florida when he died. I was staying at my great uncle’s house in Illinois. In the early morning of February 28, 1983, I had a dream about my father. He was lying at the bottom of a pool of clear water, with his hands across his chest. He was dressed in a suit and tie. He looked so peaceful and free of pain.

Then the call came. The phone woke me; it was my mom calling to tell me that Daddy was gone. I knew. I already knew.

All that time he knew and never said a word. He knew, and he made sure that everyone was taken care of before he left us. My Daddy was, is, and always will be the greatest man I have ever known. He was my hero, and I miss him.

 

Click on the "Pictures, Videos, etc." link on the right for photos of my dad and our family.