Story by Jon Stalnaker AKA The Studebaker Dude
I was reminiscing the other day about the time I ate a hamburger sundae at an ice cream parlor in Stockton, my hometown. There was a sign posted that said if you were brave enough to eat it, you would get a lapel pin stating “I ate a hamburger sundae at Dreyer’s”. Just to clarify, it was an ice cream sundae on top of a hamburger patty, not ice cream inside a hamburger bun. My courage was challenged, and I stepped forward, not because the thought of a hamburger sundae appealed to me, but because I wanted that pin as a token of my immense bravery (or was it my total gullibility?). I wore the pin frequently and cherished the conversation starter it always was. I wish I still had it, but life has taken me far and wide and the pin was small enough to fall through the many cracks I faced in life. That sundae tasted pretty good, though.
It was a sign of the kind of silliness that permeates my thought processes. I like doing things that serious-minded people shake their heads at. I’ve always thought people with no sense of humor were boring, and the more they looked at me with contempt, the more I wanted to press the boundary of silly versus not funny. Let me give you a few examples of some of the things of which I am most proud. I have an uncanny ability to state BS with a straight face, leading the listener to wonder if I’m lying, or speaking an incredible truth. Oftentimes, I do not reveal the answer to that question, and the truth comes out years later when life’s BS detectors become more honed. For example, when my daughters were younger, maybe 6 to 8 years old, I took them to Disneyland. The looks of awe and wonder were all over their faces, and I couldn’t resist taking advantage of their innocence. I told them about the animatronics technology there, and how real everything looked. We took the horse drawn carriage ride down main street and I commented that the animatronics were so life-like that even the horses pooped. Their trusting eyes motivated me to continue with my shenanigans; we boarded the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride, and as we started, I told them that some of the pirates were real people and they should point out the real actors when they saw one. “There’s one daddy,” they would say, and I seriously commented, “I think you are right.”
Several decades later, my daughter Jillian called me on the phone and told me she was a teenager when she realized that I was only pulling her leg about it. Instead of getting mad at me, she confessed that it was brilliantly executed and she tried it on her two daughters. They were a similar age, but Jillian was disappointed that they both called her out about it. They didn’t buy it for a second. I laughed hysterically and was so proud of myself for pulling that one off so many years ago.
I think it was about 30 years ago; my wife and I were commuting together. I would drive her to work at her post office and continue on to the one I was working at and reverse the commute home at the end of the day. We had to maneuver heavy traffic on the freeway and I noticed the big rig in front of me had 3 sets of taillights and 3 axles on the trailer. I pointed it out to her telling her that it was a requirement. I then saw one with 2 and 2 and one with 1 and 1 to showed her it was real. I kept it up all the way to work, pointing out the ones that fit what I was saying and not pointing out the ones that didn’t. I thought she knew me well enough not to buy it, but I apparently underestimated my skills as a storyteller. On the way home, I confessed I was just kidding, and she slugged me in the arm. She said, “Lucky for you I didn’t say anything to my co-workers, I almost did”. I think I figured out the difference between silly and “snot funny” that day.
