Over my lifetime I have pulled many a good joke on a lot of people, but I’ve had a lot of pranks pulled on me, too! People know that I enjoy living and I try to live life to the fullest when it comes to laughter and happiness. There are few things that I worry about and many things are downright serious, but I always find humor in them. I would rather laugh than cry. The way I see it, if you can’t laugh in this life you must always be a pretty sad person. When I look back at certain events in my life, I have learned to piece together a lot of the parts of the puzzle and I’m glad that God allowed me to live life with laughter.

I attempted to pull a pretty good joke during Christmas on my sister. I have two sisters and one brother and all three are younger than me. I have written stories before about my little brother, Keith, and on rare occasions I have mentioned my two sisters, Gail and Glenda, (who just turned 50!). Now I have special names for my two sisters and it’s the kind of names that I can call them, but you can’t.

To me they are lovingly known as Gall Bladder and Glen Dirt. Now don’t ask me where these nicknames came from, ’cause I really don’t know. There is no rhyme or reason to me calling them that, but it just stuck. It’s possible that I always heard about gall bladders when I was growing up from my Grandma Osgood. Seems like she went through several years of her life talking about her and all of her friend’s gall bladders.

I think every time she talked to someone on the phone, she was telling us about Aunt So-and-So or Uncle Whoever who was having gall bladder problems and I guess subconsciously the name just stuck. Where I got Glen Dirt from I have no idea. But anyhow, I had a perfect plan for a joke that would have left Gail in long-term wonderment, but her family figured me out and returned the joke to me on Christmas.

Gail and family had placed a lighted display of Mary and Joseph on their front porch. Now, I don’t know where the Baby Jesus went, but he was left out of the display somehow. I don’t know if his lights went out or if he broke, but he was not on the porch. We had a few hours of intermittent sunshine during the pre-Christmas days so I decided that Mary and Joseph needed to be modernized a little. So I went to the dollar store and bought two pair of sunglasses. Now before you get started thinking bad of me for trying to modernize Mary and Joseph, please remember these are plastic displays…Jesus didn’t have plastic in his day, so I guess we have already modernized them a whole lot. Once again, this is family fun. I’m not trying to be sacrilegious here.

I brought the sunglasses home and waited for the cover of darkness. I stealthily made my way across my brother’s yard to Gail’s house. I slopped through mud as I got my house shoes all wet, but I arrived at their front porch careful not to make too much noise. I tactfully placed the sunglasses on Mary and Joseph and slipped away into the night about to bust a gut with anticipated laughter wondering what Gail would say when she saw them the next day. I could just see her eyes squinting up as her lips tensed with wonderment asking herself who in the world would put sunglasses on Mary and Joseph.

It was an event I was going to harbor in my heart for at least ten years. I figured about the time I was nearing 70 years old and she was nearing 60, I could share the story with her at some family get together. I lived in jokester heaven for the next couple of days laughing inside while swearing my wife to secrecy.

Christmas Day was spent at my mom’s house with all the family and all the nieces and nephews, brothers and sisters and all the future in-laws. We ate a great meal and enjoyed a lot of good food when the time arrived for the gift exchange.

As each gift was sorted and opened and the wrappings all strewn across the floor, my sister Gail came and sat next to me with a gift bag in hand. She announced to everyone that there was one last gift she wanted to give to Clifford as she looked at me with a twinkle in her eye. I was somewhat stunned and told her right away I appreciated this and almost came to tears as I thought my little sister had really arranged something very surprising and very special for me, her oldest brother…

As I opened the gift bag there in the bottom of the bag lay two pair of sunglasses. She and her family had figured me out right away! It’s one gift I will never forget.

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and I pray for a great, happy New Year for everyone!

Clifford

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed