Did You Ever Make Someone Laugh Hysterically Whose Depression Had Caused Them To Never Laugh For Years? Well I Did
The story I want to tell you is about "Bringing a friend" from around 1946 or 1947 when I was 9 or 10 years old. On weekends we kids could stay outside from dawn till dusk without anyone watching us back then. My father would give me an amount of money as an allowance every Sunday, but by Saturday it was pretty well used up and I always wanted to go to a movie theatre downtown for the Saturday afternoon matinee when the fare was the regular movie, the Movietone News, a preview of the next week's movie and what I really was there to see, the Captain Midnight serial. But it cost a quarter, which I didn't have, so I had the chutzpah to go to the clothing store on a main street around the corner from the theatre that my great-uncle Chaim (my maternal grandfather's brother) owned that he and his two remaining sons, Dave and Jack, tended on Saturdays, to beg for a quarter for the movie. Chaim's son Sydney, who was a bomber navigator with the Royal Canadian Air Force, lost his life when his plane was shot down over Europe a few years before. It was known throughout our whole extended family that great-uncle Chaim continued to mourn the loss of Sydney and never laughed again, rarely even smiled, after he got that bad news.
So every Saturday I would go to ask Great-uncle Chaim for a quarter. He was stationed behind the antique manual cash register - no electronics back in those days. Eventually all I had to do was walk in, go to him at the cash register and hold out my palm, and without either of us saying anything he would take a quarter from the cash register and put it in my palm, whereupon I don't even remember if I ever even said thank you but I would run over to the movie theatre and watch the movie and of course the Captain Midnight serial. Then one day, I took a friend with me, I can still remember his name, Cecil Kipfer. We went to the store and as usual I held out my palm, and as usual without anything being said Great-uncle Chaim opened the cash register, took out a quarter and put it in my palm. I looked at the quarter in my palm, looked at my great-uncle, looked again at my palm, and then said to my great-uncle, "But uncle, I brought a friend." Well, Great-uncle Chaim nodded, and without saying anything, opened the cash register again and put another quarter in my palm, whereupon Cecil and I hightailed it over to the movie theatre.
When I got home later, my father was waiting for me with a dangerous look on his face. He told me that he should be giving me a really good spanking, but he can't, because cousin Dave had called him and told him about my asking for quarters on Saturdays from his father and had begged my father to not punish me because what happened next when I left the store was that his father, Chaim, who had hardly ever even smiled and never once laughed for years succumbed to that hysterical laughter that you can't stop. He kept repeating the words "But uncle, I brought a friend." and every time he did he would burst into that hysterical unstoppable laughter again. Dave told my father that both he and Jack were in tears of joy to see their father laughing. They had to sit him down because he was laughing so hard they were afraid he was going to fall down. Dave told my father that I caused a miracle to happen that nobody else could do. What my father did was increase my allowance by a quarter a week so I would not go and beg anyone for that money again, and I never did. From then on, Great-uncle Chaim was able to laugh again.
So I'm asking everyone who reads this, did YOU ever pull a person out of depression like that?
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A "Slice of Life" story - can you match it?
Good story and I can't match it.
Thanks, Kavika. I think that maybe I have had a lot of really varied experiences and adventures in my life, and I know you have as well, but I guess we just can't expect many to match them. As I've discovered, personal stories aren't of much interest on this site, which is so much more dedicated to the American political battle.