My Father

One of the things I remember most strongly about my father was his sense of humour.  He could laugh at himself just as easily as over any other hilarious story. 

            When he was a little boy of about 5 or 6 he asked his father if he couldn’t please have an allowance.  Somewhere he had heard about an allowance, perhaps because his older sister was receiving one and he seemed to think it was about time he received some allowance also.  The family was strapped for money but Farfar didn’t want to completely disappoint the boy so he told him that not only could he have an allowance but he had a perfect piggybank for him.  So my father went with him to the room that contained this piggybank.  There on the wall was a metal box with a slot for him to insert his coins.  Perfect.  It was quite some time before my father discovered that the metal box was the place where they would put money into to get the heat for the apartment!

            My father’s sister was seven years old than he and he simply adored her.  The worst thing that could happen to him was to have her become disappointed in him so when he got into trouble he would beg his mother “don’t tell Jonna”.  And my father got into trouble quite often, he simply couldn’t help himself.  He was full of energy and enjoyed playing out of doors.  One time he was playing in Skansebakken Park with a couple of his friends and he discovered a sewer drain that lifted up.  Naturally he climbed down into the sewer and his friends followed him.  They were having a gay old time, and for whatever reason they began digging about as part of their game.  Suddenly they came upon some artifacts which seemed very cool.  He brought them home and his father realized that they were of Viking provenance.  So off they went to the police station where my father told them how he had discovered them.  Then the museum was called and people went down to discover this new find.  But instead of my father being any sort of hero he was in trouble for having trespassed on city property!

            Another time my dad and his friends discovered a pile of those little rings that go on the nuts and bolts (and whose name I cannot recall) and then they discovered what a cool sound these things made when they were twirled on a stick.  And then they sort of hurled off the stick and flew high into the air, quite a distance away.  They heard some noise but it was a considerable time before they realized that when the rings flew away they were actually crashing into windows across the street and breaking the glass.  Once they realized what they had been doing they naturally ran home.  The next day there was an article in the paper about vandals destroying property.  Dad never confessed to having been the culprit!

            It wasn’t that he was bad, he never meant to do things that were wrong but somehow he just did some many different adventures that some of them were bound to get him into trouble.  One of his observations was that whenever the kids got in trouble, or was on the outs with other kids, they would run home to their mothers and the next time you saw them they were outside their home eating a sugar sandwich.  This particular story really resonated with us kids and when we were having a fight with one another (which happened often enough) and one of us would start bawling the rest of us would say “oh go home to mother and get a sugar sandwich”. 

When Steven Harper gets into one of his pouts I feel like telling him the same thing.