Trick-Or-Treat

                       Got a bag of candy collected Halloween,

                        Biggest bag of candy that I had ever seen.

                        Had to get it x-rayed before I had a treat,

                        To be sure a psycho hadn’t put a razor in my sweets.     

                                                            - “Halloween” by Heywood Banks

Halloween is big business. Frighteningly, Halloween is now the second biggest consumer spending holiday in the United States. That in itself isn’t particularly scary. I would think Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, or even Thanksgiving might rank second. When all of the Halloween supplies and events like costumes, candy, party supplies, haunted houses, pumpkins, decorations, movie rentals, etc., Halloween will rake in well north of $8 BILLION this year. Now, THAT’S SCARY!

Let me wax nostalgic and revisit my childhood. When I was a kid, my family’s entire Halloween decorating budget was whatever a small pumpkin cost. I was probably in third grade when my dad first whacked a pumpkin into a rather generic jack-o-lantern. It sat in the middle of one of a dozen or so living room windows. Our living room was a converted front porch, so it had a bunch of windows. This jack-o-lantern had a single candle providing its illumination.

Dad must have thought that pumpkin was a PITA, since it was replaced with a small blow-mold jack-o-lantern. I still remember it distinctly, and if it were still around would fetch a pretty penny on eBay. It was a tall stylized jack-o-lantern, and it was lit by a single Christmas tree lamp. Okay, it was a clear C7 that would now be called an old-school night light. Still, it glowed orange and was really cool, okay?

Trick-or-treat was always celebrated on Halloween night, regardless of whether it was a “school night” or not. Even on a Sunday in the “blue law” era, trick-or-treat went on!

My costume consisted of whatever Woolworth’s or G.C. Murphy had in my size for as little as money as was possible. Once I wore an old sheet in traditional two-hole ghost glory. Usually it was the cheapo flammable costume with a plastic mask that you really couldn’t see through very well.  The fact that I wore glasses from age eight onward exacerbated this low-vision mask issue.

Since it was often chilly at the end of October, I usually had a coat over my costume, leaving only the mask exposed. Wow – what a costume. We didn’t really scare the neighbors into giving up some loot. It was more of a donation to assuage their guilty conscience because they felt so bad for us freezing to death as we went house to house. We always managed to fill up a department store shopping bag with goodies in only a couple of hours.

Now, my dad always gave out nickel candy bars. Yes, back in the day, a full size candy bar cost just five cents. According to a federal consumer price index calculator, that same nickel candy bar should cost well less than a buck today, but I dare you to find one for that price! My dad was partial to Clark bars. When I was a kid, only the cheapest of cheapskates gave out what we now laughingly refer to as “fun size” candy bars. Not much fun in those for an eight-year-old in the 1960s, is there? 

Some older people in the 1960s gave out home made popcorn balls and apples. We never worried that some nut job was out to maim or even kill us with those. Razor blades and pins weren’t a concern until the national news put a real Halloween scare into our parents, pointing out the single case in some random big American city. Suddenly, the benign work of little old ladies became suspect, and their lovingly made teats ended up in the trash can. That was our paradise lost.

Schools had Halloween parties, with kids wearing their costumes and eating cupcakes and candy provided by classmate’s moms. My wife’s father did not allow her to celebrate Halloween (or even Christmas for that matter), so she was the only kid in her elementary school class without a costume. The homeroom teacher wasn’t about to let one child be left out, so she brought an extra costume in case a child “forgot” hers. Today, the ACLU would sue the school into oblivion, so if my dear wife were growing up today, she would just be S.O.L. However, my wife was grateful for her teacher’s concern and remains so to this day. She loves all of the holidays that she didn’t celebrate as a kid, and relishes them. As a result, I get to reminisce at every holiday and relive those great memories. 

I hope you get some nickel candy bars in your shopping bags this Halloween!

                                    On Halloween I’ll go to town,

                                    And wear my trousers upside down.

                                    And wear my shoes turned inside out

                                    And wear a wig of sauerkraut.

                                                             -“On Halloween” by Shel Silverstein

What's Eating You?

“Everything gives you cancer,
There's no cure, there's no answer,
Everything gives you cancer,
Don't touch that dial,
Don't try to smile,
Just take this pill,
It's in your file.”   -  Lyrics from“Cancer” by Joe Jackson

My father died of cancer. He was 62 years old. He had smoked non-filtered cigarettes (called ‘studs’ back in those days) from the time he was 12 years old until just before he died. Back in his time, just about every man smoked. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and a lot of men used tobacco as a way of escaping the fear, anxiety and confusion of war. Smoking reminded them of the civilian life back in the states, and they all longed for that.  My dad lost his ability to speak normally on Memorial Day of 1975. Subsequent visits to doctors revealed that one cancerous lung had collapsed. We didn’t know it at the time, but cancer had metastasized not only to his other lung, but to other organs and to his bones. He died less than two and a half months later.

My father-in-law was diagnosed with stomach cancer in the spring of 1998. After several surgeries, chemotherapy treatments and radiation, he died from his metastasized cancer at the end of July of that year. He had a history of skin cancer, and had many spots removed during his lifetime. Did this lead to his stomach cancer?

My dear sweet wife discovered that she had early-stage breast cancer in 2004. A lumpectomy and a month of radiation made her right as rain. Follow-ups over the years have shown that she is still cancer-free.

Here is my guilty cancer experience. I had a spot on my arm that would not heal. When the prescription antibiotic cream that the doctor prescribed failed to heal it, he scheduled a biopsy. The worst part of the biopsy procedure was the local anesthetic. That stuff hurts! Anyway, a little chunk of flesh was removed to send off for analysis, and three stitches closed the wound.

When the time came for stitch removal, the doctor informed me that the biopsy revealed basal cell cancer. This is a relatively slow-growing cancer and usually only causes problems if it is left untreated. I was scheduled to get the rest removed in a few weeks.

As I was showering the next day, the biopsy spot tore open. To me, this was horrific! Yeah, it was just a small area, but it was now an open, bloody wound. A call to the doctor led to apologies and an appointment for the wound to be closed by reinforced fabric strips. The doctor explained that cancerous tissue doesn’t always mend well. His tape strip remedy did the trick until my scheduled surgery.

Earlier this week, the same doctor removed the rest of my basal cell carcinoma. Again, the worst part was the local anesthesia. Just for your information, I do not look at what is going on with the needles and scalpels until the surgery is over and the stitches have been sewn. This keeps me from passing out.

I currently sport a stitched wound that is well over 2” long. The surgery ensures that all of the cancerous tissue plus a (hopefully) small healthy margin was removed. There are a few dissolving stitches underneath holding the “meat” together, and eight traditional stitches keeping the skin closed. Those will be removed next Wednesday. I would be lying if I said it wasn’t a little tender. I just hope that this wound doesn’t tear open the day after the stitches are removed!

What is funny is that I never really sweated having that spot of skin cancer on my arm – at least as long as I didn’t dwell on it. I KNEW that this cancer was unlikely to spread, but in the back of my mind was the realization that I did indeed have a little bit of cancer. 

I actually feel guilty, as if I had some kind of impostor cancer. After all, I know a lot of people who have endured numerous surgeries, bouts of chemo and many, many doses of radiation. 

There is no chance that I will take a lap at next year’s Relay for Life. It is a strange to think that your cancer wasn’t good enough (or more accurately, bad enough) to consider yourself a member of the fraternity of cancer survivors.

No family has been untouched by cancer. My hope is that one day in the not-too-distant future, all cancer will be simply a footnote in history. My dream is that once that cure is discovered, it will be available to everyone.

Driving Me Crazy

You know, baby, driving is a serious game,
You gonna get me a heart attack....
                                              - lyrics from "I Love You" by Yello

I have known for many years that there are some pretty bad drivers on Ohio’s roadways. Some are licensed, and some are probably not but drive nevertheless. I know for a fact that many Ohio drivers do not have insurance on their vehicles as the law requires, but since there is little consequence legally, those same drivers keep on keepin’ on. Why let trivial matters like driver’s licenses and insurance keep them from their “God-given right” to drive like an idiot?

You are probably wondering why I am on this tangent. Well, to be blunt, I am SICK of crappy drivers! Since I live in a small town in a rural part of Buckeye Nation, my wife and I are required to navigate two-lane roads to get from Point A to Point B. It is a rare car ride indeed when we are not greeted by an oncoming vehicle drifting over the center line.

Some like to hang the driver’s side of their vehicles over the center line once in a while, as if challenging this artificial barrier that they appear to have some disagreement with. Sometimes they wander over the line so far, we think we may have to drive into a ditch to avoid a head-on collision. What is strange is that “driver drift” has increased quite noticeably over the last month and a half. The offending vehicles are cars, SUVs, dump trucks… just about every vehicle type you can imagine, including the occasional motorcycle.

Sometimes the reason for this poor driving is obvious. When the driver of the oncoming vehicle keeps glancing towards their lap, he or she must have spilled a cup of fire ants on their britches, or else he or she is looking at his or her phone. Since we don’t see many fire ants in Ohio, I am assuming the latter is more likely.

 It is pretty obvious that precious few drivers in Ohio were taught how to make a left turn. I somehow doubt that driver’s education instructors across the state told their charges, “When turning left, be sure to drive through as many lanes as possible before finally reaching the lane you desire. If you feel especially kind that day, use your left turn signal before you drive through everyone else’s lane.”

While I see many case of this left turn disease daily, I saw the epitome of this epidemic just yesterday, which was Labor Day. Since it was a holiday, The Highway Patrol was out in force, pulling over speeders and other ne’er-do-wells. My wife and I had a little shopping to do in the Lima, Ohio area. We were in the left turn lane at a major intersection, and were approaching the red traffic light. Another vehicle approaching from the right was making a left turn, and not surprisingly drove through my lane, coming close to hitting the left front of my vehicle as they usually do. The big surprise was that this vehicle was an Ohio State Highway Patrol car being piloted by a trooper. Yes, a state trooper, sworn with enforcing the traffic laws of Ohio, was incapable of making a left turn!  He was not responding to a call, as there were no lights or siren, and no high speed acceleration once past the turn. He was just another crappy Ohio driver on his way to make other Ohio drivers a little more miserable. By the way, I have never had a ticket or other citation, so I have no bad experiences with the Highway Patrol to jade my viewpoint (other than that trooper’s poor driving, that is).

Anyone who has been driving for a while has some close-call stories. Our closest call came on a Saturday evening as we were driving to town for some Chinese food. As we were rolling along, a sedan driven by a teenage girl passed us as about 65 MPH or so. She must have had her cruise control on since her speed never wavered, and it was obvious that she was distracted by her phone. Coming toward us in the opposite direction was a Buick with two people on board. We saw what the possibility for a head-on collision coming, since the teen girl was driving in their lane while passing us. I hit the brakes so as to allow the girl plenty of time to get in front of us. Because she was clueless to what was about to happen and her highest priority at that moment was her damn phone, she continued in the oncoming lane. Fortunately, the Buick realized that the idiot teen was not going to return to her own lane and drove their car off the side of the road. This likely saved their lives. The clueless moron continued on her way, eventually getting back into her own lane.

The moral of my blog story today is simple. When you are driving, just drive. We all want to get where we are going without someone causing an accident!

 

Looking for Eggs in All the Wrong Places

“They have Easter egg hunts in Philadelphia, and if the kids don’t find the eggs, they get booed.”

                                                                                        - Bob Uecker

I can only remember going on one Easter egg hunt, and I was in college at the time. The egg hunt was the day before Easter, and since the weather was rainy and many students went home for the weekend, I don’t think anyone showed up. I did not live on campus. Since I worked my way through college, I drove the 12 winding, hilly miles of country roads to school each day and then drove back down the same roads to go to work after my last class of the day.

Anyway, when Monday came around, the weather was still cloudy, damp and cool. I parked by the practice football field, which was very near the fine arts building. I noticed that there was a colored egg in the grass just a couple of feet from the paved parking spots. Looking more closely, I found another. When I shared this information with a classmate, we decided that we would examine this phenomenon further during an open slot at noon.

At noon, we began searching the practice football field and learned that apparently no one had attended the Easter egg hunt that weekend. Eggs were everywhere, including all of the plastic eggs that were redeemable for prizes. We left the dyed eggs on the field, focusing instead on the prize eggs. Not to appear overly greedy, we limited ourselves to four prize eggs each, and left the remaining winners in a neat little heap at the 50 yard line. 

Ah, the spoils of victory! At the student union, we redeemed our winning eggs for Wham-O Frisbees, college ball caps, and student union gift certificates. That was a half hour well spent!

When I was a kid, Easter meant my dad boiling a mixture of water and vinegar, then pouring that into small plastic cups that remind me of modern deli containers. Since plastic cups like these were uncommon back in the 1960s, I’m not sure where they came from. A few drops of food coloring went into each container, and the egg dyeing began. A spoon was used to lower the egg into the color (no fancy wire egg holders for us), and the colored egg, dye still wet, was placed on a towel to dry. The towel used was an old, raggedy one specifically designated for this function. The towel had years of blended egg dye stains, and must have been stored with the plastic cups. The dry eggs were put in a large, clear glass mixing bowl and displayed on the kitchen table.

These eggs sat out on the table until they were all eaten. The dark blue ones that had been left in the dye too long were eaten first, since they were the least attractive eggs. The last to be consumed were the fancy double-dipped eggs. These were dyed by hand, with one half held submerged in one of the cups until the desired tint was achieved. Once dry, the opposite end would be dunked in a separate color. Sometimes a white band would be left undyed to create the coveted tri-color egg! In my young mind, they were almost too beautiful to be eaten. Almost.

Blending dyes created colors Dr. Frankenstein would be proud of. I ended up with purplish bruise- colored eggs, some that were tinted mud brown, and one memorable egg that was a pitiful blackish-gray color. There were a few successes though, including a nice orange shade and a pleasant pinkish color one time. Those pleasant tones were the outliers. As a whole, my dye blends were an eyesore.

How we survived certain death from consuming non-refrigerated boiled eggs is beyond me. It must be the same way we managed to avoid the grim reaper as we played in the dirt and rode bicycles without helmets. I do know that all of those eggs were eaten every year, either as a snack with a little salt, or sliced on the hard boiled egg slicer and eaten as a sandwich with some mustard on top. No one ever became ill from eating them. 

Maybe we were just lucky. Nowadays, TV news reports tell you to get those in the fridge immediately after dyeing them, and eat them within two days. This year, I saw a news report warning that the only way to be sure you and your loved ones would safe was to use plastic eggs. I don’t know… they seem like they would be hard to chew up and would cause a lot of damage as they worked through your digestive system. Plus, I’m sure they don’t taste as good as real eggs.  

My wife and I make deviled eggs every Easter, though it seems a little sacrilegious. We just like deviled eggs, and Easter is egg time after all.

I have heard that one of the benefits of getting older is that you can hide your own Easter eggs. No matter if you hide your own this year, or watch your kids, grandkids or maybe perfect strangers seek hidden eggs, please don't boo them like the folks in the City of Brotherly Love do. 

I hope your Easter is truly egg-cellent!       

Out Of Time

“Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-law. But always meeting ourselves.”

                                                                                                                  - James Joyce

Time flies when you’re having fun, doesn’t it? Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care? Wow, there are a lot of questions, and yet to fully answer all of those we would just scratch the surface. We could listen to the Chicago song, but that really wouldn't answer the question, would it? It is a good song, though.

Time is really a rather intimate subject. Most of us deal with time on a planetary basis, dictated by Earth's axial revolutions and associated wobbles, in conjunction with its seasonal orbiting of Old Sol. That alone is a fascinating subject, once you realize that the data from over 50 atomic clocks representing 58 countries are analyzed in a laboratory near Paris in order to create the standard known as Coordinated Universal Time. UTC is its popular title. Yeah, I realize the anagram doesn’t match up, but we are talking about Europe. And here you thought Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was the standard. Sorry, Great Britain – your Greenwich Observatory is nice and all, but GMT is so 1960s.

I have always been fascinated with time. It would be so cool to travel in time. Would you like to time travel? You can, you know. Let’s do that right now, weather permitting. Look up at the sky on the first clear night you encounter, and you will see light that was generated by billions of stars, some possibly centuries ago. 

Look out your window on a sunny day. It took 20 minutes for that light to reach your backyard. Shadows should be an object of loathing! That light from our very own sun traveled nearly 93 million miles to give brilliant illumination to our world, only to have it blocked by a tree, or a telephone pole, or maybe even YOU!  I bet you feel guilty now, don’t you?

I really enjoy a discussion of physics, as long as the required math isn’t involved. The question of time was explored more than once in the wonderful Science Channel series “Through the Wormhole,” hosted by Morgan Freeman. If you are so inclined, here is an entire episode about time on YouTube: 

My concern in this blog entry is more with the psychological aspects of time. It is the concept of time  that most of us answer to. It is the circadian rhythm, it is the biological clock, and it is the social expectations of the ever-moving hands of time. Like sands through the hour glass, so are the days of our lives. Sounds like a good name for a TV show is in there somewhere.

For me, 50 years old me has faded in the rear-view mirror, and the big six-0 is visible within my high beams. Each new year is a but a blur of days turning into a blur of months, with my wife and I usually wondering just where the heck the past month disappeared to. While an easy answer isn't forthcoming, just why this phenomenon occurs is easily explained.

When I was a kid, I LOVED Christmastime. Didn't most of us? It seemed like it took forever for it to finally arrive. The fact that my very old-school parents wouldn’t put up out REAL Christmas tree until Christmas Eve made time seem to pass even more slowly. 

Summer vacation was similar. It took forever to arrive. While I liked school, I loved the freedom of summer vacation!

As we age, time seems to pass quickly. My 30 year teaching career came and went with ever increasing velocity.

Okay, I am finally getting to that explanation I mentioned four paragraphs ago. As you age, each day, month and year becomes an ever smaller part of your overall life experience. To an eight-year-old, the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas seems to take forever! Well, it really is to him or her. Clearly, 1% of an eight-year-old’s life has passed between those two holidays.

Now, let’s look at your run-of-the-mill 59-year-old. That same 30 days (yeah, I know it isn’t always 30 days) between Thanksgiving and Christmas is barely 1/10th of 1%! It is such a tiny part of his or her lifetime that the perception is that time has flown by.

This isn’t always the case. Adults can experience the perceived slowing of time. Early in the fall of my last year of teaching, I lost one of my students.  He was killed in an automobile accident. During that horrible week, time seemed to slow to a crawl. I just wanted to get it over with, but my perceived time painfully moved at a snail's pace.

Time and I have usually been on speaking terms. During my teaching career, I liked to arrive at school by 7:05 AM, or else I felt rushed all day. It was great to arrive early, make whatever copies I needed for the day, get all of my material ready, and then have the opportunity to socialize with the other staff members as they arrived at school. The staff wasn't required to be there until 7:50 AM, but that was far too late for me and for several others. I cherished that social time with my fellow teachers and other staffers.

Let's shift mental gears, though mine are sometimes stuck in park. Anyhow, I love all of the shows in the Star Trek TV series except for the original. Hey, I DO appreciate that the original series paved the way for all of the others, and for all of the movies, but the original Star Trek just wasn’t that great. If you watched it back in 1966, it was awesome. However, by today’s standards, it was… well, kind of lame. BUT...the spinoffs dealt with temporal anomalies and even a “temporal cold war.” Like we really needed a NEW cold war! The big difference here was instead of nuclear weapons, we had to deal with time travel, time spies, and even scarier weapons.  

Still, the concept of alternate realities is tantalizingly plausible. Maybe all of time past, present and future exists around us in different time dimensions. Each one results from decisions we make in our individual lives. Every decision then branches out into brand new time lines. Hey, it's just a thought.

Since time is of the essence, the older we get, the less time we have left on this planet, I highly recommend that you not put off until tomorrow what you can do today. Quit reading this, turn off your computer, and go interact with people you enjoy interacting with. I also suggest that you let loved ones know that they are indeed loved. What could possibly be a more important use of our time than that?  

Comedy Tonight!

Tragedy tomorrow,

Comedy tonight!    

                           -  Stephen Sondheim - “A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum”

There is certainly enough drama (or perhaps tragedy, depending on one’s perspective) in our nation right now.  Growing sick, tired and a little wary of politics, I now turn my attention to comedy.

Everyone enjoys comedy. Who doesn’t love to laugh? Okay – really, that was a rhetorical question. I am not requesting volunteers or examples. The thought of those same people who whined non-stop about our previous commander-in-chief for eight long years are now screaming, “Suck it up, buttercup – we won and you lost – get over it” is not really funny, though it is ironic.  And hey, I find humor in irony most of the time. Though some humorous shows were based on the premise of irony, such as All in the Family, I don’t think the political screamers would get the joke.

Modern comedies are okay, though most are based around sexual situations 90% of the time. We watch The Big Bang Theory every week. Yup – the same old sex jokes, but add in nerdy geniuses and you have something a little different. The characters are well defined, and you can  identify with them. Well, I identify with them anyway.

I enjoy The Goldbergs. It blends some ‘80s nostalgia with dysfunctional family, and that works for me. The Middle fits into this niche as well, and we watch it occasionally. Since ABC moved it to Tuesday nights, we don’t see it so much.

I always get at least one good laugh from Last Man Standing. Like Home Improvement before it, Last Man Standing features Tim Allen as a character that many man can identify with. Maybe we just wish we were in his position. While Allen is the star, the ensemble cast is what makes this show funny. 

When I am talking about TV comedy here, I am talking about its accompanying stroll down Memory Lane. Classics from the ‘50s such as I Love Lucy are excellent. What little I’ve seen from Ernie Kovacs was simply outstanding. He was a creative force, killed in a car crash at age 42. Who knows what he may have created had he reached his full potential?

Among the TV comedies from the early 1960s that I enjoyed were Bewitched, My Favorite Martian, and I Dream of Genie. The Dick Van Dyke show is classic comedy! I also remember some very short lived shows in the ‘60s that I loved as a kid, though most adults apparently did not. It’s About Time was a favorite of mine. Astronauts traveling back to caveman days? Cavemen who spoke English? A catchy theme song? What’s not to like?  

I remember My Mother the Car, although most folks don’t or, perhaps they are wishing they didn't. I think it ran for one unspectacular season. One of my favorites from that era was Mister Terrific, which dealt with mild and squeamish Stanley Beamish, a gas station attendant, who became Mister Terrific when he took his special pill. It seems that adults in 1967 thought his power pill sounded a little too much like illicit drugs, so the show died after one season. Bummer, dude! This one has a great theme song, too. Here is a clip of Stanley's transformation.

The real era of TV comedy for me was the 1970s! I can list a plethora of them, such as Mash, All in the Family, Three’s Company, Laverne and Shirley, Bob Newhart, etc. However, I will focus on the one show that always makes me laugh out loud (a real life social media LOL) to this very day.

To me at least, the epitome of TV comedy is The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The characters were so well developed with just enough flaws left so as to allow plot elements to wedge their way in. The casting and acting was spot on. So many moments that leave me in hysterics come from just a character’s facial expression before he or she even delivers a line! Accordingly, many in the cast saw their way to successful future roles after the show’s seven year run ended.

The action takes place at WJM-TV in Minneapolis. The cast is responsible for the station’s 6:00 PM news. The Cast:  The vulnerable but strong associate producer Mary Richards. The gruff but tender Lou Grant. The talented but underappreciated, sharp witted and slightly neurotic Murray Slaughter. The buffoon newscaster Ted Baxter. Mary’s neighbor Rhoda and landlady Phyllis had their own spinoff shows. Lou Grant was one of very few successful dramas that spun off from a hit comedy. How few? Ed Asner is the only person to win Emmys for comedy and for drama portraying the same character in two different shows.

The writing on The Mary Tyler Moore Show was second to none. The writers knew the rare talent they were working with, and often used a character’s facial expression or body language to get a laugh. If you want to study what comedic timing is, watch The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Many times, you had no idea where a plot was going. What you expected didn’t happen. When Ted Baxter auditioned for a network game show in New York, you knew he wouldn’t get it. Ted leave WJM? But he did get the game show job offer! As much as everyone at the station knew Ted was an incompetent fool, he was their incompetent fool!  Lou tells Ted that he is noble for being a newsman, and Ted reluctantly – and hilariously - passes up thousands of dollars to stay in Minneapolis.

 The death of Chuckles the Clown in the episode "Chuckles Bites The Dust" is a prime example of why The Mary Tyler Moore Show worked so well. Chuckles the Clown had a kiddie show at WJM in which he portrayed several odd characters. When Lou Grant forbids Ted from being the grand marshal of a circus parade, Chuckles the Clown is chosen from WJM-TV instead. Sadly, Chuckles the Clown, dressed as one of his personas Peter Peanut, is killed when one of the circus elephants "tries to shell him." The cast was shocked and horrified, but dealt with their emotions by making jokes about the situation. Hilarity ensued, except for Mary, who chastises the rest of the station’s staff for their cavalier demeanor.

On the day of the funeral, Mary can not keep from laughing at the minister’s unintended jokes. When the minister asks Mary to stand and laugh for Chuckles, she cries instead. Talk about well played irony! 

My absolute, laugh out loud favorite comedy is The Mary Tyler Moore Show. What makes YOU laugh? The moral of this blog post – life is way too serious. Humor is not. Laugh, damn it!

UPDATE: On January 25, 2017, Mary Tyler Moore died at age 80. We have lost a talented actress and comedienne who overcame many hardships to achieve success and critical acclaim. Although she is gone, her work lives on.