Back in the early sixties, my dad was a student at Westmoor High School in Daly City. One evening during the school year, my dad and his friend, Piggy, were attending a dance in the gym. Taking a break from doing the Hully Gully and the Mashed Potato, the two friends were hanging out in the foyer of the gym, near a makeshift table composed of a pair of sawhorses and a long piece of plywood. The rickety contraption provided a surface for several dozen paper cups filled with various carbonated beverages. Piggy and my dad noticed that someone had gotten sick and barfed on the floor near the table. Before these two upstanding citizens could get the opportunity to alert a chaperone of the party foul, they spied a classmate of theirs walking quickly towards the table. As he approached the plywood tabletop, he held his hand up in the air, index finger extended skyward, and began to utter the words, “Two cokes”. Those words quickly transformed themselves into “Two cooooooooooooooooooookes” as the unsuspecting student slipped on the vomit on the ground which, in turn, caused him to lose his footing and balance. His out of control body violently collided with the table, sending the now-airborn cups of liquid refreshment to redecorate the foyer floor and to soil the clothes of those people unfortunate enough to be in the immediate vicinity.
Every time my dad tells that story, and if you know my family, that’s a lot of times, my mom and I laugh as hard as we did the first time we heard it. And they aren’t those wimpy, pity laughs, either. No, I’m talking about tears streaming down the side of your face, full-on belly laughs. Just ask Fehmeen.
Thanks for all the laughs, Dad.
The Adventures of ALS Boy 