Last week, in a WoW on this Web site, I published for the contemplation and edification of my clever and cultured audience, a short piece that I identified as “theological commentary.” Among the responses I received was a phone call from a college pal named Bill from whom I had not heard in what seemed a very long time.
Bill and I had gone to “minister school” together in the 1960’s and, when the call came in on Sunday evening, I thought he was perhaps going to express distress or disapproval related to inferences he might have drawn from what I had written.
And he did. But sometimes in the case of religious writings, bepuzzlement arises, and had in fact in this instance arisen, from a misreading of a quoted passage. I had written, you may recall, “I did not succeed, my wife, alas, decreed.” Bill quoted it to me as “I did not succeed, my wife, alas, deceased.”
I said, “Billy, did you read that sentence on a little electronic screen you were holding in your hand, and are you using that same screen for this present phone call?”
He confirmed, “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did and I am.”
I told him, “Well, Bill, if you can bring up my Words of the Week again while you are still on this phone call, please pinch your thumb and forefinger together and rest them on the glass of the phone and see if you can make the words larger on the page. I think you will see I did not say ‘deceased,’ I said ‘decreed’! I was making a little rhyme: I attempted to recite The Apostles’ Creed, but I did not succeed, [which is what] my wife, alas, decreed.”
I assured Bill nobody had died. He seemed satisfied and we went on to discuss W.C. Fields, one of whose possibly apocryphal declarations I had quoted in that same WoW.
And then, in the course of recalling several W.C. Fields declarations, apocryphal or certified, Bill offered one of my favorites, and I told Bill that I, at a microphone in a church hall, at a party for my daughter’s first birthday, had once told a story about that particular quote, and Bill said he hoped I had not recited the quote in a church hall in exactly the way he had just said it, and I said, “No, Bill, I did not. I said it in a W.C. Fields voice, and I cleaned it up a little, and you know what, I have been looking for years for a good excuse to include it in a Words of the Week, so I just might tell it again, next Sunday.”
– • –
And here we are, ladies and gentlemen. Today is next Sunday. May I tell you the story? Enlarge the font if you are reading on a phone, and I shall continue.
Once upon a time, many years ago, in the city of Los Angeles, when the woman who later became the mother of my children was in her second year of law school, she came home one evening after classes and, with a huge grin, eagerly announced she had heard a good joke. “Why,” she asked me, “didn’t W.C. Fields ever drink water?”
I stared at her a moment. I sensed something was wrong with that question. I said, gently and cautiously, “Uh, honey, I don’t know the answer, but ... y’know ... when you tell a W.C. Fields joke, maybe you kind of have to do it in a W.C. Fields voice, okay?” She was in her mid-twenties at that time, knowledgeable of American culture and comedy, but she had come to this country at the age of five, and maybe had just never gotten the message before, that that’s a rule about W.C. Fields jokes.
So she kept on grinning but she dismissed my advice with a wave of her hand and said again, “Yeah, yeah, it’s a riddle! Just tell me if you give up, Why didn’t W.C. Fields ever drink water?” I shook my head. I figured it had to be something risqué, but I couldn’t remember hearing it. She said, “Come on, Bud, it’s a riddle. If you don’t want to guess, just say ‘I give up.’ Why didn’t W.C. Fields ever drink water?”
“Okay. Fine. I give up. Why didn’t he?”
“Because fish have intimate relations in it!”
Oh, my. The sweet one-day-a-mother said the punch line with an explosive alliteration, just the way you would think, but she said it in a regular voice, and I felt obligated to try again to correct her.
“Ha, ha!” I said. “That is a funny riddle!” I said. “But maybe, my dear, try it once more, but in a W.C. Fields voice like this: ‘I never drink water, ya wanna know whyyy? I’ll tell ya whyyy. ’Cause fishhh have intimate relations in it, thaaat’s whyyy!”
The someday-a-mother, soon-to-be-a-lawyer remained unconvinced. “Yeah, okay, Bud,” she shrugged. “That’s what I just said.”
♦
