Archie's Sense of Humor

Most of my stories are about family history or essays about Important Things, but today I want to tell you about my Adventures with Archie, who was not exactly related but still played a major role as I was growing up. The first time I met Archie, it was as a guest at his dinner table. His daughter and I became best friends upon setting eyes upon one another in High School. She had invited me to dinner to meet the family, and I was on my best behavior. In some houses, plates get laden with food in the kitchen and you eat whatever is handed to you at the table. In other houses, food is piled onto serving platters or into bowls, which are passed around the table. My friend’s house fell into the second category. I was seated to the left of the host. This was done on purpose, not from any social protocol, but as a traditional set-up for newcomers. A big bowl of potatoes was in circulation. Archie served himself and handed the bowl to me. I reached out to receive it and in a flash my thumb was two knuckles deep into mashed potatoes. Tell me, what would you do at a dinner party where you want to make a good impression and everyone at the table is looking at you holding a bowl with your thumb buried in food? Turn scarlet with embarrassment? Start babbling about so sorry, can’t imagine how that happened? Help yourself to a serving, and carry on as usual? All I remember is feeling mortified, staring at my thumb in the potatoes, frozen in time, unable to move. Any and all of the above reactions would have been acceptable to Archie. The true test was if you agreed to return for a second meal. If you couldn’t take a physical prank, you had no business being in his house. The rest of the family put me at my ease right away, laughing and teaching me the trick. What you do is hold out a bowl tilted slightly toward the next person and once it reaches the receiver’s hand, give it a shove. Try it some time. It works once per newcomer. From then on they either sit down-table from you, wait until you place the bowl on the table, or never return. Of course, you’ve got pick the right newcomer. This was Archie’s favorite thing to do, knocking people off their perceptions of reality. When he wasn’t doing that, he was busy providing medical treatment to a neighborhood of poor people who sometimes paid him in chicken casseroles and used furniture. He was one of those rare medical men who devoted their lives to treat the poor, whether they could pay or not. When he discovered I had bronchitis but no money to see a doctor, he insisted on treating me for as long as it took to fully recover and never mentioned a fee. There are so many Archie stories, such as the time he and his anatomy classmates replaced the buttons on their professor’s coat with cadaver belly buttons. Or when he carried an unconscious buddy in his arms down a crowded pier to a waiting boat, shouting “Make way! Make Way! I’ve got an injured man here!” Then, when he got to the end of the pier, he tossed the man into the water, brushed off his hands, and sauntered back to shore, while onlookers gaped at him and down into the ripples of water. (The buddy swam under the pier and back to shore unseen.) No one called the police. However, those are family stories I heard over the years. They are tales for his offspring to tell. What Archie taught me was how to have a good time, how to be a prop for his set-ups, and how to step outside my comfort zone and into his zany world. For example, do you know that if you smear pink lipstick and blue eye shadow together on a fleshy part of your body you can make it look like a serious bruise and get out of doing chores? Yep. That was one of his stage tricks. My favorite application was the bruised thumb disguise. So sorry; can’t wash dishes today, my thumb is useless. Also, imagine you’re holding your hands palms together as if you were praying, then remove one hand and keep the other tucked under your chin with your thumb against your throat. Can you picture that? Now, imagine you have your back to your audience and your cohort comes up to you and pretends to slap your face but really slaps your hand. If your attacker swings in an upward arc and you jerk your head away from the slap, it looks and sounds as if you’ve been hit on the chin really hard. That’s another stage trick Archie taught us. We were walking down Hollywood Boulevard, my girlfriend and I, when Archie staggered toward us as if he was drunk. Knowing what was coming, I positioned myself slightly behind her to provide better coverage from prying eyes. Without saying a word, he slapped her in the face (not really), she burst into tears (fake crying), I wrapped my arms around her in horror (good acting), and Archie continued to wobble down the street as onlookers either stared in shock (“Did you see what that man just did?”) or crossed the street to get out of his way. Again, no one called the police. This was long before videos on smart phones, or before cell phones for that matter. Different times then. It sounds horrible as I write it, but it seemed hilarious when I was 15. The worse thing Archie made me do was when I came to his house to show my girlfriend the new fabric I’d just bought. (We either lived at her house or at my house or up in the Malibu hills in a makeshift cabin they owned. Archie was the source of all good things so I always tried to oblige him in his mayhem.) My purchases included yards and yards of grey fake silk lining. He caught one look at it and insisted that I drape myself up from head to toe like a combination sari-burka and walk behind him down the street to the local bar. He gave me strict instructions that I was never to utter a single word to anyone and never let on that I understood English. This was the first time I ventured out solo on one of his adventures so I was a little apprehensive. Nonetheless, I obediently followed three steps behind him all the way to the local pub. Grave doubts assailed me as I stared at the darkened recess of the watering hole because I was seriously too young to enter a bar in those long-ago times, but it was too late to flee. I followed him inside, hopped up on the bar stool he pointed at, kept my head down, and obediently sipped on the coke he ordered for me while he explained to the barkeep and his pub mates who I was. I was the daughter of a rich Saudi Arabian who owned a fleet of race horses. Archie’s son met me while stationed there. (Archie’s son was away on army duty for real.) My rich father had taken a fancy to Archie and agreed to my marriage. I was sent to live with my new family until my husband was discharged from service. I spoke no English. When the bartender tried to talk to me I looked at him in frightened ignorance and made no reply. That part was easy. All of this story was as much news to me as it was to Archie’s audience and I had no idea how they would react if I broke character. So I stared at my coke and looked miserable enough to make them uncertain as to whether Archie was maybe telling the truth this time. After he finished his drink, Archie motioned for me to get down off my stool and follow him out the door and back to his house, head down, three feet behind my master. Apparently, I’m a good actress if I’m scared enough because Archie started getting questions about how his daughter-in-law was doing. My lining was ruined. I’d sweated through it. That was the last time I went solo on one of his romps. It was good to know I’d passed the trial by fire. It was a little annoying to have to cut holes in my brand new fabric. Soon enough we grew to be older teenagers and boys became more fun to torture than Archie’s targets. However, he’d trained us well. He taught me to step outside of my shyness enough to chase male classmates around the school yard threatening to put dissected frogs down their shirts. That’s something to be proud of. Thank you, Archie. I’ll leave you with the only poem of Archie’s that I remember to this day, or at least part of it. I may have fudged to fill in a few forgotten words: Awake, awake! The dawn is near. The air is full of atmosphere. And down yon vale a flock of cheese Lifts its head to smell the breeze. Could it be or is it not? It is! It is! But where and what? So we see, as in days of yore, That two and two still make four.