It's in the DNA

I’ve said a more than a couple of times that I can have an off-beat sense of humor. It’s dry and a little twisted. Every now and then I wonder to myself, how did I get like this? Why do I do the goofy things I d? Why do I think certain things are funny? Things like:

The whole family went to Ireland. We’re all staying at my sister’s house. My sister lives in a little town where there are probably less than 100 buildings, total. She lives two doors down from the pub. At night, what does everyone do? You guessed it, everyone goes to the pub. So one fine evening everyone’s at the pub consuming potables and telling tall tales. There’s nothing quite like a nice warm Guinness. The night grows old, and soon it’s time to head home, back to my sisters for a much needed nap. But first, everyone must eat. There’s but one building between the house and the pub, and that building is “the chipper” The chipper is a little late night shop where you can get fish and chips, a hamburger, sausage and the like. Basically, it’s the perfect food after a long night of sipping on the Guinness. While at the chipper, one of the Kelly Boys decides he best return some of the Guinness back to its rightful owner, God. Please bear in mind, that he’s right next to the pub, and about 25 feet from my sister’s front door. None of that matters for, it’s dark and across the road there’s a wall. Obviously if he crosses the street the return process will be quicker, and he won’t have to miss any of the exciting things that are transpiring at the chipper. So he crosses the street. The streets only about 10 feet wide, so he didn't have far to go. Figuring he’s not an animal, he’s not going to return his Guinness in full view of the crowd gathering at the chipper. He decides the polite thing to do is make his return on the back side of the wall. So he climbs up on the wall, and then hops over. All you could hear is OOOHHH SSSHHHIIITTT………… as he disappeared into the darkness. The back side of this wall was covered in bushes and branches, and thorns and rocks and all manner of other obstacle, except where my brother hopped over. He chose a spot that had a 10 foot drop off, had been cleared and planted as somebody’s vegetable garden. Fortunately for him, it gave him a nice soft spot to land. So there he was, at the bottom of a 10 foot cliff, rolling around in someone’s garden, looking for a spot to return his Guinness. He calls up for some assistance because, it’s dark, he doesn’t know how to get back up, and he can’t find his glasses. The youngest brother goes to help him. They spend the better part of an hour looking for the glasses. They had to use matches for light as they rummaged around in the garden. The youngest brother holds the match as the other looks for the glasses. All the while the youngest brother is chuckling. He had found the glasses earlier, they were in his pocket.

Then of course, there’s this year’s trip to Florida.

The Kelly Boys (and a Smith, $50 says he regrets the decision to go with us) head to Florida for a restful bit of bingeing. But you can’t do that all day, occasionally you have to do something touristy. One afternoon we decided to go on an airboat ride. There we are, five guys off tromping through the wilds of Florida looking for fun and adventure. We’re taking an air boat ride. We go off to find an airboat riding place. We find one, check in and meet our pilot. This airboat driving, monster truck building, alligator wrestling, risk taker of a guide is going to take us out on his air boat. We’re bombing around the Everglades in this airboat and every so often, the guide stops to impart some important Everglady wisdom to us. Every time he stops, he calls the “gators” to the boat so we can get a really good look. During one of these nature stops, the guide starts telling us a story about being bitten by a gator. Apparently, earlier in the year, a group of tourists watched as he was bitten. He was trying to call up an alligator from one direction, when another one snuck up on him from behind. He was showing us the fresh scar and telling us about how mad he got at the tourists and wanting to throw them overboard. He was telling us about the bacteria in a gator’s mouth and that if you got bit, you should clean the wound with bleach. This story went on for 15 minutes. As he’s finishing up this story, one of my brothers turns around, looks this guy straight in the eye and asks “So what’s that you’re saying? A dolphin bit you?” This air boat driving, monster truck building alligator wrestling back woodys Floridian just looks at him for a minute. He finally says very slowly “You do know where you are right? You do know this is the Everglades. You did here me say that you’re only in about 6 inches of water and that it’s mostly fresh water? Right? You do know that the ocean is about 50 miles that way don’t you?” as he pointed over his shoulder. So this guy stops telling his story and starts driving the air boat again. At one point, an eagle flew by. This guy stops the boat, points out the eagle and starts saying that you can see almost anything in the Everglades. At this point, my brother turns around again. This time he says “So what you’re saying is, there COULD be dolphins”. That's it, the driver is now done; he doesn't think we're funny and he wants us gone. No more everglade, aligator, swamp boat stories for us. He's taking us back. He fires up the boat and takes us back to the dock. We give him his tip and ask if we can go poke around his monster truck (not to get off the point, but it really was a monster truck. 42 inch tires, 20 inch lift kit. He must have used a ladder to climb into it.)

This is the funny part. As we are paying him, the boat drifts away from the dock. He turns and runs for it. Luckily, my cousin (the Smith in the crowd. The only one with both brains AND reflexes) grabs one of the ropes and keeps the boat from floating too far away. Well, one end of the boat anyway. This guys looks at us and says “Jeez, do you think just one of you guys could give me a hand. You just stand there and let this thing float off. You know there’s alligators in this water”. And there were the 4 Kelly Boys, just standing, watch’n this alligator wrestler now wrestle his boat back to the dock. Not a one of us moved. We just stood there saying things like "You should go help him", "Gee, that looks hard to do", "He's really struggling with that thing?", "Is that an Aligator?" "I'm not going over there, I might fall in." He tied off the boat and left. He didn’t even look back. I think he was done with us. He was muttering something about another damn bunch of stupid @#";*! tourists and needing a good long cold drink.

Or even this.

I get sick and am in the hospital. I spend a couple days in an ICU in Connecticut, and then I get transferred to an ICU in Boston. After I reach Boston, my family starts to come in to see me. One of the first ones in to see me is my younger brother. I’ve been in the ICU in Boston for about a day. So my brother comes in. He goes over to the nurse at the desk and asks if he can see me. The nurse then asks him if he knows my name. Without missing a beat, he looks at the nurse and goes “What? You’ve been watching him all night and YOU don’t know his name?”

Then there’s the youngest brother. He’s going in for some serious surgery. They will be working on his neck. The lead up to the surgery had been fairly intense. The doctors are all very serious, the nurses are fairly solemn. This was a very serious situation. He goes into the hospital first thing in the morning the day of the surgery, and everyone is being very, very intense. They prep him. Get him on the table and get him ready to start. Just as they are getting ready to knock him out he shouts “WAIT A MINUTE I WANT TO SEE THE DOCTOR, I NEED TO TALK TO HIM!”. The doctor comes over, the nurses come too, the anesthesiologis is there the whole team had gathered around. The whole group is now looking at my brother waiting for him to say what’s on his mind. At this point my brother looks at all these people and says “I just want you to know, that I better not wake up with only 1 eyebrow.” The last thing he heard as he drifted off to sleep, was the medical team killing themselves laughing.

Lest you think this is just a Kelly guy thing, it’s not.

When we were young, we lived in an old house that had all kinds of creepy crawly spooky spaces and all kinds of squeaky rattley doors , steps and the like. One night my sister thought it would be a good idea if she played a little joke on my brother.

As he’s getting ready for bed, she sneaked into his closet. He eventually climbed into bed and settled in to go to sleep. All the while, my sister’s in the closet. This sister is smart, she didn’t want to overplay her hand so she waited. She waited a good long time. Just about the time she figured he’s falling to asleep, she very slowly put her plan into action. She very quietly started to open the door. Slowly, she pushed on the door. And the door started to squeak, a slow drawn out squeal of a squeak. Now my brother is awake. He’s awake and staring at the door. He’s got the blanket pulled up to his ears, and he’s watching. He’s watching the door slowly open. And open it does, squeaking and squealing the entire way. My brother is terrified, but he can’t move, and he can’t make a sound. But the door is opening, he can hear it and most importantly, he can see it. Next my sister wraps her fingers around the outside edge of the door. Slowly, one finger at a time she wraps her hand around the door. She does this so my brother can see it. Now he’s had enough. He starts to yell. He’s screaming, the whole house is now awake. Everyone comes running. There’s my brother with his head under the blankets screaming blue bloody murder and my sister, she’s rolling around on the floor in hysterics.

This has to be the best practical joke ever. My brother screamed at night for years afterwards. When he went camping in high school, my mother warned his friends that he would scream in the middle of the night. When he was getting married, my mother warned his bride to be. This guy screamed at night probably until he was well into his 30s. Oh sure, he doesn’t think it's funny, but unfortunately for him, his vote doesn’t count. 7-1 we win, it was funny.

I have a dry, twisted sense of humor. It’s the way I was raised. It’s in my damn DNA. It's a Kelly thing.