We live in a glade, my mother and I. We live in a house that sits in a forest. And we live with my father. My mother and I are quiet people, except when we laugh. Then we are loud, and we go on and on. My father’s a talker. He has no sense of humor. He goes on and on but says very little.
My mother and I, we have our own language. We speak in code. Lines from old movies, Marx Brothers routines. We quote them and laugh. My father stares like a dog at a book. I don’t get it, he says. What’s funny about that?
I found a list online the other day of what someone called “Mostly Forgettable Movie Quotes”. I remembered most of them. Number ten on the list comes from Steve Martin’s “The Jerk.”
In the movie Steve Martin’s a carnival worker. He guesses people’s weight. A man steps up from the crowd and asks, what do I win? Martin answers:
Anything in this general area right in here. Anything below the stereo and on this side of the Bicentennial glasses. Anything between the ashtrays and the thimbles. Anything in this three inches. Right in here, this area, that includes the Chiclets but not the erasers.
What’s funny about this, we explain to my father, is the word “anything.” How quickly its turns into practically nothing.
Someone thought it was “mostly forgettable”, but my mother and I actually quote this quite often. It is part of a repertoire we have, and we change it a bit to suit the occasion. Sometimes we say, but not the Chiclets.
My father and I do not have our own language. We do not speak in code, or share private jokes. He is one of those people who can take anything and turn it into practically nothing. He sounds as if he might break when he laughs.
My mother and I are already broken. From the years we have lived while he danced on our backs. Now we live in a glade, in a house in a forest and my mother and I laugh loud and long. After all this time. This is ours. This three inches. Including the Chiclets.