Come to Jesus.

Looks like she's finally found God.













Good for her.

Spontaneous Combustion

‘Twas the night before Christmas many moons ago and on top of the coffee table, not an object was stirring except for a wildly flickering jelly candle… and next to the flickering jelly candle rested an artificial flower arrangement. As the flame turbulently twittered in every which direction, my family lounged, reveling in each other’s company and the holiday spirit. I had assumed my official holiday position, sprawled by myself across the loveseat which visibly bore the punishment of years of insubordination to my mother’s injunction against “plopping”. My parents shared the couch, and my brother and sister each occupied a comfy white armchair. We were engaged in some edifying holiday family togetherness… I think we were reading Dickens or eating plum pudding or (most likely) reciting Christmas Vacation lines to each other when the small undulating blaze emanating from the jelly candle licked the very tip of the lowest fabric leaf of the artificial flower arrangement.

Initially, no one noticed the dueling flames dancing atop the coffee table, but after a few moments, my sister pointed at the six-inch conflagration in the middle of the living room and sputtered, “F-- f--f--.” Try as she might, she could not get “ire” to follow the “f”.

“What is it, honey?” my dad asked.

“F--f--f--,” she stammered, still pointing.

I injected myself into the conversation. “Um, Dad… the flowers are on f-“

I did not stutter. Before the “ire” could pass over my tongue and through my lips, my dad had jumped to his feet and yelled, “FIRE!!!” He immediately transitioned from holiday to survival mode, leapt from the couch and, in one heroic sweep, scooped the burning arrangement into his hands.

The fireplace was four feet away.

Unfortunately, he did not deposit the fire into the fireplace.

The front door, leading to our snow-covered front walkway was six feet away.

Unfortunately, he did not pitch the miniature inferno through the front door to our snow-covered walkway.

Instead, Dad ran. His goal had been to run through the living room, through the dining room, through the kitchen, and through the garage to the driveway wherein he would drop the burning flowers, compose himself, and determine his next course of action.

Unfortunately, his scheme did not go as planned.

As he ran, the flames spread across the surface of the decoration in his hand. He attempted to blow them out but his breath only encouraged the fiery expansion. He made it to the cusp of the kitchen when the flames began to burn his hands, at which point Dad’s Plan B took effect.

Plan B was to dropkick the plant the length of the kitchen to the garage door… and… actually, that’s where Plan B ended. There was no clear exit strategy. Which did not matter, because what seemed to Dad at the time of its inception an infallible course of action turned out to be quite fallible after all.

Arms outstretched toward the garage door, Dad held the glowing orb of flames before his face and dropped it like a punter preparing to send a football flying down the field. He kicked the basket. Instead of catapulting forward (the typical result of having been kicked in a forwardly direction) the basket wobbled up and over and behind his head, barely missing his hair. It landed five feet behind Dad, still in the living room, the flames now two or three feet high.

The smoke alarm finally recognized the potential disaster under its nose and began warning us of impending doom, when Plan C took effect. My sister, finally breaking free of her “F-- f-- f--” paralysis, yelled, “Fire! I’ll go get some water!” She ran to the kitchen, filled a Dixie cup with water, returned to the fire, splashed the water on a Dixie cup-sized satellite flame about eight inches from the main flame (which, thanks to Sister, was almost extinguished), then repeated as necessary, incrementally diminishing the magnitude of our indoor brush fire. Roused from our Christmas perches, Little Bro and I stood by watching, helpful only in the respect that we were not making the problem any worse. Dad stood by with his hands on his head. Black smoke began to fill the living room.

Where, you might ask, was my mother during these escapades? She was nowhere to be seen. We all assumed that she had grabbed her most precious possessions and hit the road, leaving us to fend for ourselves. Turns out, we were wrong: she was readying Plan D. She coolly returned to the room with an old blanket and draped it over the former faux flower arrangement and extinguished the fire by smothering it.

In the midst of the black intoxicating smoke and shrill detector siren, my dad fell to his knees in despair in the aftermath of our Griswoldesque holiday disaster. Before him was an incinerated patch of once white carpet and the remains of his favorite fake flowers. The living room furniture was subsequently rearranged to hide what resembled the last vestiges of an (sub)atomic disaster. Since this nightmare before Christmas, my family has traded their air freshening candles for fragrance oils, and “fire” is a four-letter word around the holidays.



For other death-defying fiery posts, click here or here.

Don't(.) Blog this.

Something strange has transpired between my in-laws and myself. Somewhere over the course of the recent holiday and funeral season, a deep distrust has developed whereby my family-in-law seems to fear (correctly?) that I lie in wait for bloggable moments. Now, whenever anyone says something amusing, remotely funny, embarrassing, shocking, upsetting, or mundane, they immediately turn to me, eyes shifting, and suspiciously utter, "Don't blog that."

At which point, I lie and say that I'm just jotting a grocery list, not a blog idea. Sheesh.

One exception to my in-laws' recalcitrance toward my blogging at their self-perceived expense is my father-in-law's strong desire for me to post a picture of his head with the Wendy's wig superimposed where his hair (if he had any--see related comment by Peppy Lady here) would be. I'm afraid this image, beautiful as it would surely be, will have to wait for me to hone my Photoshop skills.

My in-laws are probably reading this post, wishing they'd said "Don't blog that" after they said "Don't blog that."

They should know that I only blog about those I love (with the possible exception of this).

Mourners say the darndest things

There is an untamable mystical force which courses within my veins that impels me to utter words generally recognized as inappropriate at the most inopportune moments. Such utterances (yes, multiple occasions of social ineptitude) occurred last Thursday at the viewing of my grandmother-in-law.

To set the stage, there were two periods of time on Thursday where friends and family could come to pay their last respects: 2-4pm and 6-8pm. In the intervening time, our family went out to eat at a local Italian restaurant. An elderly gentleman employed by the funeral home opened the door for us as we returned at 5:45pm, a full fifteen minutes before the viewing was to resume. Fully fed and momentarily forgetful of the gravity of the present occasion, I whispered to the man holding the door, “Is Grandma still here?”

To which the man deftly replied, cupping his free hand to his ear, “What?!”

Unflappable, I determined to have my joke heard and appreciated. “Is Grandma still here?!” I replied in my loudest inside voice. “She hasn’t gotten up and left yet, has she?” I asked loudly, hoping to make crystal clear the fact that I was playing the funny man.

“What?!” he shouted more loudly than the first time. I braced to repeat myself a second time but looked from the man’s flummoxed visage to the rear of the facility where a group of three mourners had already gathered near Grandma’s body a quarter hour before visitation was to officially begin. They stood staring at me, mouths gaping, clearly aghast at my ill-conceived attempt at levity.

My (even louder) recovery effort was unsuccessful: “I said, ‘Is it still cold outside?!’” I looked around to see if I had fooled any of the mourners. I had not; they stood before me in suspended animation, their faces betraying disbelief. The man at the door looked at me like I had just asked the dumbest possible question and replied, “Yes, it’s still cold outside.”

I walked inside and toward the three ladies who had heard my insensitive confabulation with the gentleman at the entrance, hoping to smooth over my insensitivity with more sensitive funeral-appropriate conversation. They had been talking amongst themselves, awaiting the arrival of the receiving line. As I approached them, the ladies politely feigned forgetfulness and acted as though I had never asked about Grandma’s whereabouts. They tearfully introduced themselves to me.

Mid-introduction, one of the trio said to the other two, “I just can’t stop crying.”

One of the other two replied with helpful advice: “Tilt your head back. That helps me control the tears.”

Not missing a beat, I immediately quipped, “Nah, that’s just for nosebleeds.” I waited for the laughter; there was none. Jaws dropped again. I could see the three minds working in unison, wondering, “Who is this guy? Is he actually related?” My wife’s embarrassed and apologetic smile confirmed that I was indeed related (thanks to her agreement to be bound to me in holy matrimony, if not wedded bliss). I politely excused myself. I had inflicted enough psychological damage on these poor souls. If I could not control the words coming out of my mouth, the least I could do was distribute them more broadly across the wider spectrum of attendees so as not to cause maximal insult to any single person or family.



I am not the only one, however, to have spoken in a manner unbefitting of a funeral parlor. Earlier in the day, during the first session, a pair of pleasant older ladies arrived to pay their final respects. One of the ladies (the more lucid of the two) introduced the other (the older—and peppier—of the two—she was 87) to Grandma’s family members. “…and this is her son-in-law,” the lucid lady said to the peppy lady, gesturing toward my father-in-law.

The peppy lady’s eyes lit up, and she thrust her cane in the air as she shuffled closer to my father-in-law. “You’re the son-in-law!?” she exclaimed in awe.

“Yes. I’m—” he began.

“Why,” she interrupted, overcome by the figure towering in front of her (her four-foot-something frame was dwarfed by his six feet and change), “you’ve lost your hair!”

He was stunned—he had in fact lost his hair some time ago. He seemed not to know how to reply. Frankly, even I, quick-witted blogger, would have been speechless.

“That’s okay!” she promptly shouted, demonstratively. “I like men without hair.” She paused, raised her cane in the air again, and blurted, “Heck! I like men!” Instantly, the once melancholy crowd surrounding the son-in-law and the 87-year-old man-ophile burst into raucous laughter. Lucid Lady politely ushered Peppy Lady to another corner of the funeral home not yet tainted by the sounds of her advances on younger men.




The viewing hours drew to a close, and as Grandma’s family prepared to leave, a couple slipped inside. “Are you here for the visitation?” the funeral director asked the bundled man and woman.

“No,” the man replied, deadpan. “We’re just coming in from the cold.” There was a long, awkward pause, after which the man clarified, “I was joking. We’re here for the viewing.”

The joke, it turned out, was on him. The funeral director did not laugh. “I’m sorry, sir, the viewing hours are over,” he replied, also deadpan. Another awkward silence transpired between the two. “But that’s ok. You can visit with the family for a few moments.”

After these final visitors had left, the funeral director sat on the parlor couch and waited patiently for our family to gather our belongings. I sat in a chair next to him. Out of morbid curiosity, I asked him, “How does one decide to become a funeral director?” He explained that he had known that this was what he wanted to do with his life ever since he was in the third grade. Also in the third grade, he added, he had determined that he would marry his grade school sweetheart. He accomplished both of his goals: he’s now a funeral director married to his third-grade girlfriend for thirty-plus years.

He mentioned that in addition to the funeral business, he had also always wanted to go into the restaurant industry. “Couldn’t you combine the two?” I asked, reviving the spark of humor I had unsuccessfully initiated earlier in the day.

“No,” he answered. If he knew I was joking, he didn’t let on.

“You know, you could have the dining room over there by the…” I gestured toward the room next to the main viewing area, my voice trailing off into the distance.

“No, that wouldn’t work. You can’t combine the two.” He set me straight.

“Sure, okay,” I conceded.




Rest in peace, Grandma (1928-2008).