4- Sunday, August 18, 1985 -

North Shore News

What's. so funny

FUNNY. WHAT'S funny? What’s not funny?

Funny is a funny word.

My six-year-old boy got
quite upset the other day
when an odd incident occur-
red in which everyone
started laughing, even
though it didn’t make any
sense to laugh at all.

We were sitting on a
beach, watching the sunset,
my wife, the two small kids,
plus the mother and father-
in-law team, known as Pop-
pa and Grandma.

It was a perfect in-
tergenerational domestic
scene until my father-in-law,
Bill, got around to tossing
rocks into the water, making
a tipple kidding his grandson
that a sea monster was com-

ing up for air and disappear-

ing.

Suddenly, my ‘brain seem-
ed to bulge ° ‘against my
eyeballs. ds..a_tertific ex-
plosive went off in the mid-
die of my head. Everything
blurred and wobbled. There
was a dead silence as my
tight. hand. automatically
groped toward the bump ris-
ing on the back do my skull.

It took a few seconds to
realize. what .had ‘happened.
Aiming to throw. another
rock into the water, my fa-
-ther-in-law had accidentally

hurled an egg-sized stone -

~smack into the back of my
~ thinking equipment
considerable force from a
distance of a few feet. ‘It
hooked on my finger,’’. he

explained, . Aorribly embar- :

rassed..

.. Knowing it’ was ‘an: acci-
~ dent, L-quipped: ‘Gee, Bill,
‘I-knew you were mad at me

with.

for sleeping with your
daughter, but....”

Everybody’s tension
dissolved into relieved
laughter, since this was a
signal that 1 wasn’t really
hurt, except for my outrag-
ed, confused six-year-old,
who yelled: ‘‘What’s so
funny? Why's everybody
laughing?”

Luckily, my father-in-law
hadn’t quite killed me. I ex-
plained rather thickly to my

kid. that laughing is some-
times just a way of releasing
pressure when everybody
feels bad, even if it DOES
seem strange for Poppa to
bash Daddy with a rock
from behind and then have
Mummy and Grandma
laugh.

Needless to say, when I
could finally think again—
days later—I contemplated
the term ‘Freudian slip”
with renewed interest, think-

ing about my own daughters .

and -my. ultimate . attitude
toward their eventual

* husbands—should marriage

still be around.
Actually creaming one of
these perverts in the back of

a wv council agenda

: WEST. . VANCOUVER.
COUNCIL: Monday August
19, 8 p.»m.: GVRD re-develop-
ment service . grant/ Sign

“bylaw panel report/ Bylaw on .

creek protection for Cypress
Creek/: Local gov’t liability/
.. 1984 financial statement for
. the District of West! Van-
. ’ weal :

couver/ Campaign for famine
relief/ Application to sell fresh
cut flowers from a street loca-
tion/ Liquor licence. applica-
tion. 1731 Marine Drive/ Sale

of municipal larie allowance/. -

Computer link with hillside
school/ Anna Wyman and
YMCA tax exemption request.

the head with a rock made a
lot of psychological sense
from a father’s point of
view.

Not that I suspect for a
moment... Hey, come on!
Bill’s not like thai! Father-
in-laws are like German
Shepherds. They fall into
“thard’’? and ‘‘soft’?’
categories. Bill’s a softie. It
HAD to be an accident. If
he wanted to hurt me, there
are so many other, more
brutal ways. Don‘t babysit.
Don’t loan the wheelbarrow.

I do, however, appreciate

hairy-chested kind of
ultra-macho character, you
understand.)

I empathized with my
poor father-in-law, by the
way. I remember, when my
first son was just a baby, I
threw him exuberantly into
the air at a family gathering,
only to have him smack
against the lower-than-I-
thought stucco ceiling.
Luckily, he didn’t STICK to
it. But, as you can imagine, I
was in poor favor with my
aunts for a long while.

Oh, for the record, I just

strictly personal

by Bob Hunter
my son’s confusion about
what is funny and what
isn’t. A lot of humor is quite
savage.

Sometimes, after a really
good cry, what do you find

yourself doing, if not
laughing? And often it is on-
ly after a good cry that a
good laugh can happen.
(Not that I ever cry, being a

history!

barrier.

Like:

futures,

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want to make it clear my fa-
ther-in-law is a saint. I’m
really lucky that way. And I
know he loves me. He must.
I ‘give good grandkids,
don’t I? Oh sure, with a lit-
tle help from HIS daughter!
Innocent little angel that she

Freud, you should have
seen this scene!

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