The newest version of our dog ate my homework.
Paul and I (mostly Paul) had the dubious honor of shredding over 30 years of my fathers financial papers and other records.
Oh the things we found. 🙂
My Dad was a smart guy. He was also very social despite being shy as a kid. He could tell a joke that was about 3 paragraphs long and either made you groan or laugh.
His shortest joke was this one:
Did you hear about the termite who walked into the saloon and asked “Where is your bartender”?
Think about it…I will give you a clue in the P.S.
This photo pretty much sums him up. 🙂
He could also talk to anyone and make complete strangers feel at home. I am grateful he passed a little of that on to me. 🙂
As we were shredding we discovered he had yearly correspondence with the IRS. Mostly about his taxes being late. As the letters piled up I was cracking up. Just so you know he was a huge DIY’r before it became a thing so I am not sure if the person he was referring to was an accountant, a bookkeeper or a secretary that was good with numbers.
The excuses ranged from :
- My accountant skipped town
- I fired my accountant
- The accounting firm made a huge mistake and I fired them
- My bookkeeper disconnected her phone because she was depressed.
- My secretary went on vacation and didn’t leave me the files
No there was not one about the dog ate my taxes but there might have been and we just missed it.
There was one about how he was recovering from a heart attack ( very true) but he left out the part that he was working on his taxes and the stress gave him the heart attack.
All of these reminded me of this scene from MASH:
https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkxz9ISG8CXHzklUzPur6IE4WtbLIMU4dKf
I seriously wonder if the IRS had a file with my Dads name on it and when his yearly correspondence came in they said “Hey we have another gem from that guy in Virginia”
All kidding aside my Dad was so honest. We found other letters where he admitted to math mistakes and sent the IRS a check for his mistake and all of them were less than $10.
We also found his high school report cards. My Dad was big on education and good grades. He was a proud graduate of Penn State and Purdue University. Always trying to advance himself he graduated from Catholic University Law School the same day I graduated from Mary Washington College.
I expected to find he had aced all his classes in high school. Not even close. It is my guess he didn’t want us to repeat his average performance in high school so he set the bar high. We are all allowed our less than stellar moments as young adults and our kids don’t need to know everything ( wink wink).
After reading all the IRS letters and other things he wrote I wondered if my Dad missed his calling. He worked his entire life focusing on science and regualtory law and yet he was very creative and obviously funny even when he had no intention of being funny.
A huge part of his legacy is his sense of humor. Whenever people talk about my Dad they always mention his sense of humor and his jokes.
On that note I will leave you with a fractured version of a joke my father loved to tell:
There were two Idaho potatoes who gave birth to a beautiful Sweet Potato. She grew up into a lovely young Sweet Potato and fell in love with Walter Cronkite and he proposed marriage. Sweet Potatos parents were quite upset and opposed the marriage. Why? Well quite simply they did not want their lovely Sweet Potoatoe to marry a “commentator”
We would all groan and my Dad was tickled that we fell for it.
And if you don’t know who Walter Cronkite is…well that is what google is for 🙂
He was quite the entertainer with his jokes and his letters to the IRS. I bet they miss his yearly correspondence.
In any case I will,as always, keep triing..to find the humor.
Jennifer
P.S.
The technology gremlins do not like me and I have finally figured out how to get them to play nice so next week if you have subscribed you will get the blog posts in your inbox..phew!! Facebook often doesn’t play nice either so if you don’t want to search for my weekly bits of insight and humor you can get this in your inbox every Tuesday ( a day earlier than everyone else 🙂 Just fill out the very annoying pop up in this post!
All grammatical and spelling errors are my gift to you and may you have a magical day or several 🙂
I hope you find humor in your day today…my father said it was the lubricant of life. Also if you didn’t get the termite joke..remember termites eat wood so they would want a tender piece. I know I know..it is so bad. Still I miss my Dad and his crazy bad jokes.
I was recently published in the book ” So God Made a Mother” ( you can order it here) and I am working on a yet to be named novel. My six grandchildren keep me young and my very organized hubby Paul tolerates my very unorganized yiddle ( middle and youngest) self. Opposites do attract 🙂