Leigh’s Humor

Considering the terrible near-death experience she survived as a young woman, Leigh had an amazingly beautiful sense of humor.  She was quick to recognize the potential for humor in a situation, and unmerciful in dealing it out, especially when family members might be the target.  

Leigh’s daughter, Haliegh, posted a hilarious story on Facebook a couple of days ago of how Leigh pranked her by gifting her with a book bag when Haleigh was in the 8th grade.  The book bag was covered with colorful peace symbols; Haleigh hated peace symbols for whatever reason.  The humor was in the fact that Haleigh, just the day before, had pitched a fit when she noticed that a new pair of glasses she had just bought had a couple of peace symbols on them.  She was distraught as only an 8th grader can be at the embarrassment of wearing glasses to school that had peace symbols on them.  But when Leigh happened to see a book bag in WalMart that day which had peace symbols all over it, her devious mind could not resist the thought of seeing Haleigh’s reaction when presented with even more peace symbols.

Much of Leigh’s humor involved me, usually as the victim.  I posted on this blog on November 26, 2017, the story of “Put the Sheep in the Fryer.”  If you haven’t read it, by all means, check it out under the category of “Living, Loving, and Laughing.”  And of course one of Leigh’s favorite stories was about my sterling performance at the Myrtle Beach Marathon several years ago.  I’ll save that story for a separate post due to the length of the telling.  Many of you have heard that story several times anyway.

One of Leigh’s favorite “gotcha” incidents, I’m sure, also involved me as the victim.  This incident happened when we were living at Cooper Ridge.  My mom was nearing her final days at an assisted living facility in Sumter.  One day when we were visiting there and she was probably not real lucid, she told me that she wanted me to sing at her funeral.  She mentioned two songs, “Amazing Grace” and “The Old Rugged Cross.”  My aunt Dixie, who has a marvelous voice, and I had sung at family reunions a couple of times and I guess Mom was impressed.  I told her I’d be honored to sing at her funeral, although I knew there was no way that I would be able to pull that off.  Nevertheless, I often would sing those and other favorite old hymns to myself when I was alone in the house (I still do).  I would imagine I was singing at a funeral or in Church.  On this particular day, I was alone at home and decided to practice.  Using a wine glass as my microphone, I was really belting out “Amazing Grace,” when unbeknownst to me, Leigh came up to the house to borrow some milk or sugar or something.  Borrow in the sense of not really intending to pay it back of course.  I was performing in the computer room, so could not see nor hear Leigh come in.  She heard me of course.  She could probably hear me as soon as she walked out of her house.  She faced a bit of a dilemma – should she walk in on me and interrupt my performance or stay back out of sight until I finished.  Either way, she assured herself, she had the greatest “gotcha” ever on me.  Just as I was belting out the final notes after going through four stanzas, I walked out of the computer room and saw her in the kitchen.                                                                                                                            “Dad,” she said, “you’re probably thinking that I’m going to tell everyone in the family about this.  Well, guess what?  I am.”  And she did.  Actually, though, she was much kinder about telling than she could have been;  I can only recall a couple of times when she mentioned it.  But she always had that gem in reserve.