... where family is the source of humor!

Freddie, Louie, Fred ... and Frank by Carol Wells

My husband sometimes felt unsure how to react when first meeting my children from a previous marriage. They would share little things with him, things they felt were spectacular but him - well, he was stumped on exactly what would be the appropriate response.

Over the years, my daughters have had cats, dogs, fish, birds, and once a fly as pets. Yes, you read that correctly. My oldest daughter had a pet fly the same year comedian Heywood Banks recorded Fly's Eyes although these two events were unrelated.

That summer flies were particularly annoying so I hung a flypaper strip in the kitchen. "Brizz-zzzt," a fly would hum while zipping by or curse, "Bszsth-thszersth," when unsuccessfully avoiding the flypaper. One afternoon my oldest daughter watched in horror as a fly tried to free itself, "Oh that's so cruel! Help it, Mommy."

One look at her expression stopped me from explaining that I wanted the flies to attach themselves onto the flypaper. Under her watchful eye, I tried to help the insect free itself from its sticky predicament. This fly managed to have only one wing stuck to the flypaper but, as gentle as I tried being, that one wing remained adhered on the flypaper.

My daughter felt it was her responsibility to care for this now handicapped fly, which she named Freddie. This fly story helps us fast-forward to 1997 after Frank became part of the family and, thus, privy to some of my daughters ... um, less than normal moments.

Like the time my youngest daughter pulled Frank by the hand over to a small metal hamster cage. "Look at my new pet," she beamed. "I named him Louie!"

Frank only saw bits of grass lining the bottom of the cage and part of the enclosed hamster wheel - but no hamster, mouse, or similarly small rodent in sight. Feeling unsure of what to do or say, particularly given the 8-year-old's enthusiasm, he lied. "Very nice," he commented.

"Yep," she said proudly. "I fixed it up for him - all by myself."

"Really," he tried to sound impressed.

"Yeah," my third daughter commented dryly. "She's been driving us bonkers with this silly bug she caught."

"Bug," Frank asked thereby exposing his lie; a fact not missed by the proud pet owner.

"You said you saw Louie," she said.

"I, um, no," he replied. "I was commenting about how you fixed up the cage for him."

"Oh," she replied, "He's right there, sleeping on the pile of leaves on the wheel. Grandma says it is a locust."

He stood back up and whispered, in shocked amazement, into my ear, "Your daughter has a bug as a pet?"

"I told you about Freddie, didn't I" I whispered.

"Um, no, what about Freddie?"

My oldest joined the Louie viewing party by this time and overheard Frank's question, "Freddie was my pet fly."

"A pet fly? As in a housefly?"

"Yep," my oldest replied. "He's buried next to Garth Brooks." Frank's expression was a Kodak® moment.

A few days later, my youngest daughter broke the news that she suspected Louie had died. "Are you sure," Frank asked.

"Well, I am not totally sure; but he hasn't moved off his bed since the day before you saw him," she replied rather matter-of-factly.

Poor Frank. He wanted to take into consideration the child's age and her apparent sense of loss over an unusual pet but he was not sure how to act sympathetic over the locust's death while still wrestling with the idea of someone considered having one as a pet to begin with.

In 2004, my older two daughters shared another "Frank caught off-guard" moment. My second daughter, at the age of 18, toured the south side of Philadelphia with her older sister and I. "So, what do you think of Philly," Frank asked her when we returned from the excursion.

"Eh," she replied with a shrug. "A little boring ... until Fred came along."

"Fred," he asked curiously - wondering if this was someone, from one of the Philadelphia string band groups, that my oldest daughter knew.

"Yeah," my oldest daughter replied. "This pigeon kept hanging around our table when we eating cheese steaks at Geno's. So she named it Fred and talked to it while taking pictures."

"Yep, I have taken about a roll of pictures ... most of them are of Fred," my second daughter said. "So far he's been the coolest thing during my visit. It would be so cool if I could take him back to Indiana with me."

Frank had an expression of stupefied amazement when hearing that, out of all the things one could see while in Philadelphia, a pigeon most impressed one of my daughters. Not only to the point most of the pictures taken, so far, being of that pigeon but my daughter casually mentioned wanting to take the bird home with her; which would've been humorous at the airport when asked why a pigeon was stowed away in one's suitcase.

"A pigeon," he murmured. "Like Indiana doesn't have pigeons?"

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Naked
[David Sedaris; 224 pages]
My husband and I look forward to listening to David Sedaris on NPR as his stories always have us laughing. Living with OCD, his mother's death, and realizing and accepting his homosexuality are amongst life's trying situations but he recounts about those with dignity and unique humorous insight.

I'm lookin' at the world through fly's eyes.
Looking at the world through fly's eyes ...
And you can just buzz off.
-- Heywood Banks Fly's Eyes

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