He's probably DEAD!

So, I thought I'd share a funny story here (as the bow of the ATS Titanic dips below the surface)...

It's a story about my father whom I loved dearly. He's been gone for many years now, but we used to tease him about this while he was still with us (all in fun of course). My father was a very serious man most of the time, always very matter of fact. Engineers can be like this. He could also have a dark side sometimes (at the strangest times).

One Thanksgiving holiday the whole family was all home to celebrate the occasion, my sisters, their husbands and children, the wife and I. We were all sitting around the dinner table the day before Thanksgiving chatting before dinner when the phone rang. Now, my dad was never really a guy to embrace the latest technology, and telephones was one of these things. He absolutely demanded that there be one phone, connected to the wall, with the handset connected via cord to the phone (i.e. an old style pushbutton phone). And, this phone also needed to have a regular bell for a ringer, AND this had to be turned up to the highest setting. Let me tell you, when this phone rang, it would make you jump right out of your socks! (I think he would have been even happier if he could have figured out a way to hook that thing to an air raid siren, train horn and ship's klaxon). In his house, you dropped everything you were doing (literally) to answer that damn phone! Anyway...

So the phone rings, and the shocking sound of the bell silences the room instantly. My father jumps into action and heads for the phone. (That was the other thing too; if he was in the house, then HE (and no one else) WOULD answer the phone!) ...

" HELL-O? (very official sounding)
Mmmm-hmmm. Yeah. Mmm-Hmmm. No. Mmm-hmmm. Okay. I see. Okay."

That's it. That was the whole call. And with that my father comes back over and sits down at the table. The room is silent, everyone looking at my father. So, I finally break the silence..."Well???...Who was it????"

He says, very matter of factly..."Some woman...looking for some guy named Allen...sounded important. Wrong number, I dunno.... Then he paused, and before anyone could interject with further questions, and completely out of the blue, he said...

"He's probably DEAD!"

You could have heard a pin drop! Everyone in the room gets this shocked look on their face, and starts shooting glances around at each other. I think I probably snickered first, and then one of my sisters giggled a little bit. My wife then spewed some lemonade out of her nose, and my mom burst out laughing. The whole room was just roaring laughing. I was laughing so hard I was crying and snorting.

"WHERE the heck...did THAT come from???? "...was pretty much the universal sentiment around the room!

As my dad sat there and contemplated his statements, and everyone's reaction, he began to realize just how silly and crazy all that sounded, but at the same time he was trying to reconcile all this with his darker side which probably actually believed that ol' "Allen" really was dead.

My father tried repeatedly to explain himself, but the more he tried the funnier it got, and the more he got into the laughter of the whole moment. It was totally hilarious, such a macabre thought, on such a festive occasion, with such unintentional comedic timing.

My wife didn't know my father as well as I did (obviously), but to this day if you ask her one single thing she remembers best about my father she will very emphatically say two words...

imitating my father's voice..."They're DEAD!"...,.

Weird, I know, but pretty hilarious with the monotone and deadpan delivery my father had.

You reminded me of a British comedy skit I saw on TV some 40 years ago. It started as a documentary about a child actor in some old movies from around the 1920s and 30s, then after a short bio, the narrator states that "And she's dead". Then the photo of the actor expands to show the entire view that includes many other people that the narrator points out with arrows and states, "and he's dead, and she's, and there dead" until the entire picture is filled with arrows.

I'm not sure why mortality is humorous, but the British have a strange sense of humor.

a reply to: TheMichiganSwampBuck

I'm not sure why mortality is humorous, but the British have a strange sense of humor.

Ricky Gervais said.....

“Remember, when you are dead, you do not know you are dead. It is only painful for others. The same applies when you are stupid

a reply to: TheMichiganSwampBuck

Not British here, but I think the comedy gold is in the finality of statements like that. I mean, how do you follow something like that up, right? There's like nothing you can say in reply. "Uhhhhh...Okay???" LOL!

I know where my father got that dark sort of morbid side from; it was his mother, my grandmother. She was 1st generation Irish and about as morose as they came. When you look up Debbie Downer in the dictionary, you see my grandmother's picture. So, for him, it was almost a conditioned response, but he (on the other hand) was a generally very happy person. As noted though, the dark side would show up sometimes at the weirdest most comical times. That was definitely one of them!

We still own an old phone with the real bell in it, it's hanging on the wall in the basement...still hooked up. We also have one in our livingroom, it's ringer is dampened down though, set on below medium. Those phones are not effected by power outages, so we have two hooked up to our landline....power here out in the woods gets knocked out quite often, we have landline phones here and we have little cell coverage here most times because of hills around us that have iron and minerals in them.

My alarm clock is almost as old as me,, it is only about sixty four years old. It wakes me up instantly, no fooling around, it has a bell in it for such a small clock it makes me jump right up. it is a baby Ben. I get up earlier than the clock goes off most times because I think the shock of it making me jump up conditioned me to get up and turn it off so I would not get shocked.

a reply to: rickymouse

Yeah, we still have landline phones for the same reason, just not the old Ma Bell style.

Heh, I still laugh about that dang phone my dad had. Man, was that thing LOUD! It would make you jump every...single...time. He loved that thing. In his gruff voice he'd say about it..."Most reliable damn thing we've got around this joint!"

And, I swear, I honestly believe if he could have figured out a way to hook an air-raid siren to that thing, he dang sure would have! Even in his later platinum years, when he was in assisted living, he would growl..."I can't hear that damn phone when it rings. I keep tellin' 'em, they need to get my old phone in here so I can hear the damn phone!! Damn people don't know how to run this joint proper!!" I actually brought his old phone to him one day. You'd have thought it was Christmas and his birthday all rolled into one; he was so happy about that. The people at where he was staying kept turning it down though because it would scare everyone. LOL!

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

You're not so old. I remember the days of rotary dials and party lines in rural communities.

You pick up the phone to make a call and someone is talking on it. Put it back down and wait a few minutes to try again and the same 2 are still talking. Pick it up 30 minutes later and the same 2 are still jabbering.

a reply to: charlest2

Oh, I remember those too, but I was pretty young. Definitely rotary dial phones; those were all we had until I was about 12. Party lines still existed where I grew up, but if you paid more you could have a private line. But some of my friend's family's still had party lines, and exactly as you describe, you'd be talking and some neighbor would pick up the phone and tell everyone to quit yacking because they needed to use the phone.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

We used to have our farm phone on full ring volume all the time. You could hear it out by the barn or when you were getting veggies out of the veggi field closest to the house. With the window open you could hear it over a hundred feet from the house. People who called knew if we didn't answer, call back in five minutes because it would take that long to get back to the house. Also, we had a party line, you had to make sure the call had the right number of rings to it.

The basement phone is from the late fifties to early sixties...dial phone of course. The old style phone in the livingroom is from Ma Bell, but is an eighties phone, the wife worked for AT&T and Michigan bell for many years but quit and did something with her pension in the late eighties and she does get a pension now but it is not that much, She would get a free phone, but the phone is in my name not hers....sucks We got some old phones left, but our daughter is collecting them and we try to keep some of them out of her clutch.

I like the phones with the real bell in them.

originally posted by: TheMichiganSwampBuck
You reminded me of a British comedy skit I saw on TV some 40 years ago. It started as a documentary about a child actor in some old movies from around the 1920s and 30s, then after a short bio, the narrator states that "And she's dead". Then the photo of the actor expands to show the entire view that includes many other people that the narrator points out with arrows and states, "and he's dead, and she's, and there dead" until the entire picture is filled with arrows.

I'm not sure why mortality is humorous, but the British have a strange sense of humor.

Charington Briggs gave not two figs,
Whether he lived or he died.
But when he was dead, he laid in his bed,
And he cried, and he cried, and he cried.

and...

Andre Previn went to heaven,
A little bit too soon.
St Peter said, "You're not quite dead,
Come back this afternoon".

- both from the late great Spike Milligan (he's dead, too).