Today's Moment of Dad...The Lighter side of Marriage...

Laughter was present in our home, more often than not. I think one of the greatest gifts my parents gave both of us was humor. They could laugh at themselves. They laughed at their mistakes as they picked each other off the ground.

One such instance: my mother was sometimes called "the mad dunker" because of her propensity to dunk ANYTHING into milk or coffee. I do share this trait except for the coffee part, and I'm a bit more discriminating about the dunked matter (as in cookie, sandwich, etc).

But Mom didn't just dunk into HER own coffee...nooooo...she dunked into Dad's coffee too. HE HATED IT.

Her worst dunking episode was when she got into dunking bananas in her coffee.

(Uh - huh...yeah...it's nasty. I've seen her do it. It's just WRONG on so many levels.)

As usual, it wasn't enough for her to dunk the old banana in her coffee...no...she had to dunk in Dad's too. One day, her plan went horribly wrong because the banana (BTW, I love typing that word...I could type it all day) BROKE OFF AND FLOPPED INTO DAD'S COFFEE.

It was nasty-looking...like an albino piece of poo.

Dad just kept looking at the cup, then at Mom - back and forth...and got angrier by the minute.

"That's IT!" he cried. Since it was close to New Year's, he said, "Dammit, Mary, I'm making your New Year's Resolution for you. NO MORE DUNKING STUFF IN MY COFFEE, DAMMIT!" Mom said, "OK, John." and tried to look sheepish while stifling a giggle at the same time. But (as far as I know), she stuck to it.

Another way Mom and Dad got their jollies was by engaging in weird activities (don't worry... this is family friendly)

One day, Mom found a mouse and screamed for help. Dad killed the mouse (sorry, PETA...) put it in a plastic bag, chased Mom with it while she screamed, and then threw it away. I don't know if it's some kind of Midwestern, middle aged mating dance thing or not. All I know was it was just...WRONG.

The folks were also accident prone...one time they were putting Christmas lights on the roof, and Dad asked Mom to throw him the big orange electrical plug that was on her end of the roof. Mom's aim (when throwing) was normally bad, but not that day. She nailed him right in the knee (accidentally, of course...if she'd done it on purpose she'd have hit herself) and he almost fell off the roof.

When they'd go out to eat and sit in a booth, Mom would sit on the inside. When she was ready to go, she'd start slowly pushing Dad out of the booth...until he was hanging onto the table to keep from falling off. It was weird. When they'd go on a day trip and Mom wanted something, she'd call Dad to the sales counter and address him as "Bill Fold". Dad would call Mom "May-Ree" and Mom would call Dad "John Dear" with a bad French accent.

They liked to dress up and go to Halloween dances. One time, Mom dressed up in Army fatigues and Dad dressed up in one of Mom's squaredance dresses. However, instead of using cotton socks for his cleavage, he used wool Army socks. As handsome as I thought my dad was, he made a really hard lookin' woman. Furthermore, he spent the night scratching his chest because the wool socks made him itch, while his artificial cleavage bounced up and down. Not a good look.

Another time, Dad was a pirate and Mom was a vestal virgin (she was going to be an angel but she forgot her wings). One Halloween was particularly interesting because Mom and Dad dressed up as cave people but Dad didn't want his legs to get cold; therefore, he wore his long underwear. Classy stuff.

Yes, laughter and humor were both important in John and Mary Dawson's marriage. And they had it...buckets of it.

I'm smiling as I type all this, BTW.