Hear a recorded Greeting from Mister Ed Himself!
This is going to be a tirade written in stream of conciousness!
I am fully responsible for its content! If you are
offended by challenges to your sanity or intelligence, read no further!
Most of the people who know me think I'm a pretty funny guy. I mean they think
I have a good sense of humor...and maybe a little twisted. I grew up with the
TV shows of the sixties: Munsters, Addams Family, F-Troop, Get Smart, Lancelot
Link, Secret Chimp, The Monkees, etc. were some of my favorites. The Addams
Family especially endearing to me because it involved a group of people(?)
living together as a family, doing things every day that they concidered
perfectly normal. Then some unsuspecting schlub would come to visit them, and
we would all be entertained by the reactions that weird family would cause.
From my perspective as a kid, my family was like that. All my friends seemed
to have the same Mom and Dad as each other, and they never understood my folks
at all. One of the strange things about us was the way the folks would call
us home. Dad had been in the Submarine Service in the Navy, and had picked up
one of those "diving alarms" you always hear in the old WWII sub movies. We
called it the "ah-OOO-gah", and that's just what it sounded like. We even made
the local newspaper, front page story! Let me quote from the original article:
"There, rounding the point in the slanting early
morning sun, were two Japanese battleships, three cruisers and seven destroyers
in battle formation. Take her down!
"Oh my goodness!" Mrs. Newbegin said. "Here comes my next-door neighbor. She
knows I'm home alone." (See, my family invented that phrase...I want royalties!)
"Everything's all right," she shouted. The neighbor, relieved, went back indoors."
A movie from that same time period REALLY affected me. It was the original
"Invaders From Mars". You know, the one where a kid sees the saucer crash, yet
nobody believes him. The reason, of course, is because they've all been brain-zapped
by the Martians. Suddenly Mom and Dad are mindless zombies who show no emotion and
try to make the kid do things he doesn't want to do, like clean his room and
eat old Mr. Fister's brains for lunch. After watching that movie, I finally
understood why MY Dad was so weird sometimes. I used to...this is absolutely true...
try to look at the back of his neck to see if the little scar was there from
the Martian brain-zapping machine. He caught me doing it once, and asked me
what the hell I was doing. "Thought I saw, um. a flea back there." I said. Swift...
Now that I have kids of my own, I wonder what strange notions they have about me.
I'm not a "normal" parent by any stretch of the imagination. I watch all the same cartoons
they do, I don't drill "Just Say No" into them at the expense of their ability to
choose right from wrong. I have to balance my need to have them keep their rooms
clean with my desire to see them literally reach for the stars. Mostly, I want
to be spontaneous and fun-loving, and not catch them trying to take a peek at the
back of my neck.
Dictated to my voice-activated Zzyzzyx8000 Star Date 0298.15
