There ain’t much fun in medicine, but there’s a heck of a lot of medicine in fun. – Josh Billings
I rented the movie City Slickers last night and watched it with my wife Robbie (her suggestion) and daughter while we ate great take-out Indian food. My wife and I had seen it years ago, but remembered liking it a lot and thought it would be appropriate for our daughter, age 15, to see with us.
I’d forgotten that the Billy Crystal quote I used in a Joe to Go a week or so ago, “Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place” was from this movie. This time, though, it was a follow-up line that made me laugh so hard, tears rolled down my legs. Crystal denies to one of his pals that an attractive woman was flirting with him, insisting that she was just being polite. “Polite?” his pal says incredulously. “That was ‘I love your ass, can I wear it for a hat?‘” I started my patented howling laugh, and this in turn triggered peals of laughter from Robbie and my daughter, laughing mainly at me. We paused the VCR to give us time to recover.
Later, the same buddy notices this woman bouncing up and down on the saddle of her horse and challenges Crystal to admit to the fact that he’d “love to screw her brains out.” Crystal wryly comments “Oh, that’s a lovely metaphor, right up there with that other favorite of yours, ‘Bang the shit out of her.'” Again, the three of us, with me leading the way, laughed till it hurt.
The final sidesplitter. As the city boys bring the cattle herd back to the ranch, the owner can’t believe they did it all on their own and comments, “I’m as happy as a puppy with two peters.” My daughter looked at me and laughed a little, and then I said, “Hey, when your teacher asks you tomorrow ‘Hi, how are you?’ you can use that line.” The thought of it struck her funny bone and this time she laughed so hard that Robbie and I laughed at HER till it hurt.
Several times today I thought of these scenes from the movie and laughed out loud. And I was grateful to have had the experience with my daughter. We’ve been cautioning her about not being too much of a goody two-shoes at school and this kind of mild crudity seemed an appropriate medicine for the ailment. One of my best memories with my dad was doing the same kind of infectious laughing watching Laurel and Hardy on TV. I hope it’s a memory maker for her, too.