Parents CAN Be Funny…

When I was a teenager, I was only a little rebellious (until I got some hair on my chin).

That’s a story for another time, but I do credit George Carlin for helping fan that little spark of rebellion. I had a copy of “FM & AM” that I was playing when my mom came into my room, right about the time George was talking about a middle-class mom dropping a casserole and saying “shit,” and that the suburban euphemism, shoot, was really “shit with two O’s.”

My mom immediately cracked up. Once she regained control, she told me never to play that record again. Sorry, Mom – your laugh gave you away.

Years later, my father told me that they’d had a free preview of HBO one night and were just shocked, SHOCKED by the language that Robin Williams had on his “Night At the Met” program. Why, they could only watch ten minutes before they turned it off.

Ten minutes? Holy crap, that’s about nine and three-quarter minutes longer than I thought they’d last. I’d like to think they were laughing too hard to find the remote, but they may have just wondering what the frak Robin was going on about…

I had uncles (past tense, most of ‘em are gone now) who were funny as hell and could be kinda crude too, and Mom and Dad would laugh, sometimes a little nervously, but they laughed ‘cause it was funny. Of course, they never use that language (unless they drop a casserole). Did I ever mention that Dad was in the Navy during WW2? Yeah, I’m sure they’d never used that language.

That, to me, was hilarious, and led me to discover that sometimes what even parents say and what parents do are gonna be two different twains whose twacks will never cross (thus never the twains shall meet). I like the idea of those twains meeting in the dark of the night - and then jumping back in the shock of recognition.

I think Carlin’s language was always appropriate. I wish more people would listen to what he was saying instead of getting hung up on how he was saying it, but I also understand that how he was saying it was almost as important as what he was saying. Even though my parents (and a helluva lotta others as well) didn't appreciate it when he used "that language!"