HUMOR

My Wife Said, “Yeah, I think you lost sight of the story in this story, old sport.”

A tale of benevolent parasites that goes off the rails probably

When I was young, my cousin and I would save our hair for each other.

This didn’t mean we harvested it from shower drains or bagged it after haircuts then wove it into dolls with walkie talkies in their wombs so we could talk to each other through our hair babies like all the kids are doing these days. We just didn’t get haircuts. We let our hair grow and grow in preparation for our annual summer trip to northern Maine where we stayed for a week at the family camp.

We competed with our hair. We wanted to look like wild men: John the Baptist, Samson, the demon possessed, and, of course, the burning bush.

Whoever had the higher hair would be the Bright and Morning Beast, Lion of the Tribe of Youth, and the Son of Summer.

So my hair grew and grew through the fall and winter, becoming a meadow, a young forest. I was very proud of it, its height and density, but my proudest moment occurred at Grammy and Grampa’s house, a moment that let me know my hair had truly achieved a wildness worthy of Maine.

Mom and Dad and we three children were sitting around the round table with Grammy and Grampa in their kitchen, talking and laughing. We’re a laughy family, always getting each other going. Especially Grampa and Dad. Telling grand stories, usually about mistakes and disasters. Those are the best stories:

• The time Grampa threw coffee in the face of a mean marine. Except the coffee missed. It vaulted in a brown rainbow over the Oorah’s shoulder, and Grampa got beat.
• The time Grampa got stung in the neck by 60 honey bees then stopped, dropped, and rolled around on the driveway behind a running car’s tailpipe, using the fumes to smoke out the bees, which abandoned his neck, not because of the fumes, but because of respect.
• The time Dad sparred for fun with a boxer friend of his, landed a lucky…