Funny Pictures

Instead of a more substantial post

I had great plans for a meaty post over the weekend. Last week I interviewed a fascinating young lady named Christie who has created a career as a handywoman, and I planned to write about her and post it this past Sunday.

Then I flew to Tennessee to visit my daughter Emily, and I also got sick, because the universe has decreed that I must get sick when I go visit my daughters. [At least it wasn’t Covid this time like when I visited Amy in 2022 and Jenny in 2023.] This time, I got a bad cold and have had stopped-up ears ever since I landed, making me half deaf, as well as a cough that’s flirting with bronchitis, since that seems to be an important requirement as well.

So the interview with Christie will wait, but meanwhile I am recovering at Emily’s, and she is taking very good care of me. I decided to post some pictures I collected over Ben’s wedding and found amusing.

Your assessment may be different from mine, but that has never stopped me from thinking something is wildly funny.

Some of the siblings gathered for breakfast at the 99 Grill in Harrisburg, which is done up in a 50’s/car theme, the morning of the wedding. My sister Margaret sent me this photo of her posing with the charming mannequin inside the front door.

She also told us how our brother Fred told the waitress he has one complaint, and that is that the hostess didn’t make eye contact with him. The waitress apologized profusely, Margaret said, until she eventually figured out that Fred, in ultra-typical Fred style, was referring to this mannequin.

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I knew there was a funny story about these turtles, but it got lost in all the post-wedding commotion. Finally I tracked it down. Jenny says: “Me and Matt and Austin and Nolan were going to get the gifts from the car to take inside. We’re just walking along and it’s dark, and nobody turned the lights on, cuz it’s like we all know the way. And all of a sudden Matt trips and we’re like, ‘What’s going on?’ and then Nolan and Austin start cracking up and they’re like, ‘He tripped over a herd of turtles!’ I turn on the flashlight and sure enough, there’s these four turtles that Uncle Fred made, just sitting there. We all just died laughing.”

Fred makes these creatures from old World War II era helmets and an assortment of metal scraps. He brought a few as gifts for me, Ben and Elizabeth, and I forget who else.

Fred told me he hesitated to give these as gifts to the cool young people because what if they thought they were weird. I assured him the young folks loved them, as illustrated below by Matt and Ben.

A few of us in the family are hypersensitive to scents, especially those dreadful, poisonous artificial scents in plug-in air fresheners. So before the wedding, Emily and I went nosing around in the bathrooms of that labyrinthine old church, sniffing for Glades and then unplugging them and hiding them away. Emily found a towel and wrapped an especially egregious specimen and tucked it away before it could cause migraines or asthma attacks on the big day.

We all forgot to put it back where it belonged.

Somehow the same names keep coming up when we recall funny moments.

These giant hilarious googly eyes suddenly appeared here and there around the house. It turned out Emily and Jenny had gone to Dollar General to try to find me some nylons—unsuccessfully—and bought a pack of googly eyes instead, which they stuck to my shoes, printer, washer, and garbage can.

I got nylons from Amazon, with next-day delivery.

On Sunday morning, we celebrated the April birthdays: my brother Marcus, Jenny, Matt, and Phoebe.

Rebecca and I decided to photobomb the photo.

In our heads, we heard Mom laughing in spite of herself from Heaven and saying, “Ach, maet!” And we heard Dad not laughing and saying “Aaacchh, you’re acting like silly town girls,” which was his worst epithet for us, which we still think is hilarious.

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Both families represented at the rehearsal dinner have their share of expressive aunts, and I got such a kick out of these photos featuring my sister Margaret, in the green dress and crocheted vest in the foreground, talking to our sister-in-law Anna, and Elizabeth’s aunt in the background on the left in the tan sweater.

Meanwhile Margaret’s husband Chad and Fred’s wife Loraine are looking at pictures on someone’s phone and don’t change their expressions at all.

I’m including this photo because Emily thought it was funny. Personally, I thought it was more clever than funny, but I’ll take either adjective. I do love message boards.

It is destined that at our big family events, there will be plugged up toilets. The wedding was no exception. Here we have Emily saving the day.

We recall my mom’s funeral in Minnesota at the Evangelical Free Church in Paynesville, Minnesota, on a bitterly cold December day. We had donned piles of parkas and pants and pullovers for the burial and then discarded them in heaps in the bathroom corners. But then suddenly the one toilet filled up and began to overflow. My cousin Anna Fern and I dug armfuls of paper towels out of the trash and threw them down to sandbag the flood, then turned to grab the endangered wraps and haul them to safety.

Thankfully, the situation at the wedding venue was far less dramatic but also worthy of laughter.

We close with the delightful photo of a hungry, thirsty bride restoring her strength between the photos and the ceremony.