I Like My Men Silly
Ever Since I Was 10 Years Old
I’ve been married for 47 years. Guess why? Because I married a silly man, and he makes me laugh. He’s not silly all the time, just sometimes. It pleases me when he gets this twinkle in his eye. Though I did not know him when he was a kid, I have a feeling he had the same twinkle then, too. He could run fast then. He can run fast now.
Over the years, Dennis has told me some of the silly stuff he got up to as a boy. I was envious because I couldn’t do those things.
Dennis told me his mother, Mary G, would exclaim, “I don’t understand how you can get so dirty at the movies.” He didn’t tell her that during the boring times, like when people were kissing, he and his friends would get on their backs and scootch under the seats until they reached the front row. All the way down to the front row, they would be scootching past and under people’s legs. The other kids watching the movie thought it was a hoot. The grownups did not. You can imagine what was stuck to the back of his shirt when he got home.
When they tired of scootching around the movie theater, they’d go to the ladies’ restroom, where they would proceed to clog up the toilets with toilet paper, flush, and watch the water splash out onto the floor. That was fun.
As he got older, he got a job as an usher. After the movie started, he’d go open up the emergency exits for his friends to get in without paying.
The best adult fun thing he did was when he got out of the army. At least, I was amused. He was stationed in Nurenberg, Germany. President Nixon had just called for a 30,000-man troop cutback. If you hadn’t gotten an Article 15, which was a disciplinary action just this side of a court-martial, you could take advantage of the early release. Dennis went to his sergeant and asked to be included in the early out. His sergeant said to him, “Why are you so excited? It’s going to take months before you get your paperwork done.”
Dennis nodded his head. He went back to his quarters, found a valuable German postage stamp, and went looking for an early out. He found it. The trade of paperwork and valuable postage stamp happened in the men’s room, between stalls. The next day, he presented the completed set of orders to his sergeant. His boss said, “I’m not even going to ask how you managed this.” Dennis got out of the army 18 months early.
There was another funny thing that happened while Dennis was in the Army. He was stationed at The Presidio near San Francisco. He was in language school to learn Romanian. The Army wanted him to be a German-English-Romanian translator. One day, a high-ranking officer was touring the troops, and all the personnel were out on the parade field at attention. At the time, Vietnam was going on, and all the men there were draftees. Pretty much, anyway, and they all had a bit of a chip on their shoulder. Draftees, unlike people who enlist voluntarily, were uprooted from their lives. Dennis was in college, and when his number got called, he was drafted as a sophomore. He told me once to really make a young person into an adult, they should go through boot camp. It’s tough.
So, back to the parade route. The high-ranking guy was walking past all the soldiers who were lined up at attention. He stopped in front of one guy and said, “Soldier! Your shoes look like shit.” The soldier, who was a lawyer who had been drafted, said, “It’s merely a reflection, Sir.”
All hell broke loose. The guy was hauled away, fined, and punished. It was the fastest Article 15 any of them had ever seen administered. Dennis said everybody pitched in and collected the wages he missed out on. Dennis said for the rest of the time the guy was with them at language school, he was the hero and could do no wrong.
When I told that story to my father, Dad said, “No officer would say something like that.” Then he stomped off. Right, Dad. Not a funny man.
After 25 years of continuous draft, when the Paris Peace Accords were signed, the draft was ended on January 27, 1973. Men ages 18 through 25 still need to register for the draft through the Selective Service in the United States, though women do not.
I can’t think of any other funny things off the top of my head, but all through school, I fell for the funny guys. It was appropriate that I married one. Handsome and funnier than all get out.
Right now, Dennis is an historian for The Alameda Post, a local online newspaper. Here’s a story he wrote for the paper about shipbuilding. He’s been in the newspaper business for the last 28 years. He’s also writing a novel.
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