Somebody Throw Hick, the Jokester, a Bone

I'm pretty sure Hick was born without a funny bone. I don't have x-ray evidence, but living with him over 37 years has provided me with plenty of the circumstantial variety. He doesn't find comedy funny. And I don't get his jokes.

Hick watches old reruns like The Andy Griffith Show. And MASH. He will sometimes chuckle. But any modern shows that I watch, Hick does not grasp the humor. "That's entertainment for morons!" Huh. Maybe it's just Hick's way of calling me a moron...

When HOS (Hick's Oldest Son) and The (Little Future) Veteran were elementary school age, Hick had a habit of grabbing them by the nape of the neck. Just to mess with them, when they were doing something else and didn't expect it. I little pinch which Hick held, saying, "What's that?" They'd hunch their shoulders in surprise, and say, "What?" Then Hick would say, "Turkey peekin' over a log!" And guffaw. Is it just me? I don't get it.

Now we come to Hick's latest. Remember how he fell at the Senior Center, and busted his lip on the floor? And I (almost) felt sorry for him? It swelled up a little bit. So Hick had a fat lip. It was quite dark purple in a spot the size of a dime on his lower right lip.

Hick came home from town Wednesday, saying people at the Senior Center, and some of his buddies, had been asking him what happened to his lip.

"I told 'em that I thought you said 'Shut up,' but what you really said was 'Stand up!' They all thought that was really funny."

"What? That's not funny. I don't get it."

"They thought you hit me!"

"I get the part about you pretending I hit you, rather than you falling down all by yourself when I was miles away. I don't even mind you making it about me being an abuser, instead of your own clumsiness. But what you're saying is not funny. It doesn't make sense. If you'd just said, 'Oh, I made my wife mad,' THAT might have been kind of funny."

"It's the same thing, Val. Everybody laughed."

So did the gal at the title office when Hick told his same "joke" at the closing for Lap House. I'm pretty sure she was just being polite.