Are we there yet?
December 5-11, 2016
By Jay Edwards
No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad. ~Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus
Recently asked to come up with one word to define our marriage, KM and I agreed that, without a doubt it had to be - laughter.
As I told the person doing the “marriage research,” when you raise two children through their teen years and beyond, you better have a sense of humor.
We have laughed together from the beginning, which for us was 1975, the year that spawned movies like, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (“I must be crazy to be in a loony bin like this.”) and “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” (“It’s just a flesh wound.”)
‘75 was also the year of “Jaws,” the first movie we saw together. There weren’t a lot of laughs, but if you wanted a girl to hold your hand on the first date, Jaws was your movie.
1975 was also the year that introduced us to “Saturday Night Live,” (“Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis.” ~ Jack Handey, “Deep Thoughts”) – and the face of television was forever transformed.
We actually stumbled upon SNL accidentally, as I guess most Americans did, and it didn’t take long for word to spread. After October 11 of that year, when 10:30 rolled around on a Saturday night, you definitely wanted to be near a television set.
Well, that’s essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it’s all over much too quickly. ~Woody Allen
To me, the seventies stand alone as the golden years of irreverent humor - and its kings were Mel Brooks and Woody Allen. Brooks’ year was 1974, when he came with “Blazing Saddles” (“How ‘bout some more beans, Mr. Taggart?”) and “Young Frankenstein” (“Good night, Frau Blücher.”).
And Woody won the Oscar in 1977 for “Annie Hall” (“I used to be a heroin addict, now I’m a methodone addict”).
KM and I saw “Annie Hall” in Fayetteville. The theatre was tiny and we sat on the front row, but it didn’t take long to forget those inconveniences and relish the comedy classic. It was also the first time I’d ever seen Christopher Walken, who played Annie’s death-obsessed (but in a funny way) brother.
That is the best - to laugh with someone because you both think the same things are funny. ~ Gloria Vanderbilt
We were fortunate and found out early that the same things made us laugh. There was one time in 1978 when we went out to the movie “Hooper,” with a group of friends. You may not remember “Hooper,” because, well, it was forgettable. I don’t know who picked it but it wasn’t me.
Anyway the movie started and we had sat through maybe ten minutes, when KM and I turned to each other with the same sort of, “How do we get out of here?” look on our faces.
In the next theatre was another new movie I’d heard about, so we made our escape, leaving the group behind, to suffer through more of Burt Reynolds and Terry Bradshaw.
After both movies ended we found our friends, who wondered what happened to us. We were trying not to laugh as we attempted to explain, but it wasn’t easy because the movie we’d just seen was about life at a college fraternity. It was called “Animal House.” (“Nothing is over until we decide it is. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?”) And the rest, as they say, is history.
Jay Edwards is editor-in-chief of the Daily Record. Contact him at jedwards@dailydata.com.
