Funny things in life

Over the years I have experienced my fair share of humorous incidents; some of the incidents involved things that happened to me, and others involved things I said. My cousin Darlene often brings up something I said that happened when I was about 4 or 5-years old.

Someone bought me a black cowboy hat, and I wore that thing 24/7. I think it was over the Christmas holiday and myself and my other cousins and my sister were at my grandparents’ house. Somehow I misplaced my hat, and could not find it for a couple of days. While playing in the bedroom where most of us grandchildren slept, I was sitting on the folding, rollaway bed I slept on. While playing, I just happened to look between the bed and the wall, and I found my hat.

This bedroom opened into the dining area of my grandparents’ house, and my grandfather was sitting in his usual spot at the dining table drinking a cup of coffee. When I found my hat I was so excited that I ran out of the bedroom straight to my grandfather saying, “I found my hat down by the rollaway!” My cousin Darlene heard me, and literally fell on the floor laughing.

This next incident happened about 15 years later. My grandfather and I were working on an addition to his barn. This addition basically doubled the size of the barn, and it was just the two of us working on it. We were both up on ladders, with him on one side of the barn, and I was on the other side. A huge pile of scrap tin, broken lumber and other debris sat just under my ladder. Also, my grandmother happened to walk up at that time to ask us what we wanted for lunch. As she was asking my grandfather what he wanted to eat, I stepped up a rung on my ladder to nail a plank in place.

When I stepped up to the next rung, my ladder kicked back a little, causing me to momentarily lose balance, and I started to fall backward. I reached out to grab the post I was attached to, but I missed it. When I made the move to grab the post my right knee buckled slightly, which caused me to lurch forward a few inches. I swung out my left arm toward the post to which my ladder was attached, and my hand contacted the side of the post. I literally clawed my fingernails into the side of the post and pulled myself forward and put a bear hug on the post. I actually had wood residue under the fingernails on my left hand from where I grabbed the post!

When my grandmother saw me almost fall, she blurted out, “Almost seeing you fall didn’t do my heart any good!” To which I replied, “It did not do mine a whole hell of a lot of good either!” I can still see my grandparents laughing to this day. My grandmother was bent over double down on the ground, and my grandfather had a bear hug on the plank he was sitting on, bent over double and laughing the hardest I had ever seen him laugh!

This last incident involves something I said before I engaged my brain. In my defense, wait there is no defense, never mind. This incident also happened at my grandparents’ home, and it involved my late cousin Ronnie and his first wife. I went into the living room at my grandparents’ house and sat down on the couch. I noticed some pillows in the middle of the couch, but really didn’t pay any attention to them, and sat down in front of them. A few minutes later my cousin’s wife comes into the living room and says, you nearly sat on the baby! I was startled, and asked whose baby it was.

I guess it had been longer than I thought since I saw my cousin and his wife because I did not remember her being pregnant the last time I saw her. She told me it was her baby, and before I thought I said, “Where did you get it?” To which she replied, “Am I going to have to explain the birds-and-the-bees to you?”

By Ralph Dickerson