![\"Dad](\"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/2No5-e1459728594244-284x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAunts Clara and Bette showed up right on time to pick up Dad for a lunch outing that day. They pulled into the driveway – and got a shock.<\/p>\n
Dad came to the door in his bathrobe and staggered to the car, moaning.<\/p>\n
“Ohhhh, take me to the hospital!” he groaned.<\/p>\n
Alarmed, they helped him lay down in the back seat, then barreled down the street toward the hospital.<\/p>\n
Dad stopped moaning and sat up.<\/p>\n
“APRIL FOOL!”<\/p>\n
That was soooo Dad. Even in his late 80s, he still loved to play pranks on April 1.<\/p>\n
Every year when we were growing up, we tried\u00a0to be hyper-vigilant on that special morning. But he always got us.<\/p>\n
I think that vigilance helped\u00a0when I became a journalist. I found it easy to doubt and question, always on guard against being caught out as a fool.<\/p>\n
But what helped me a lot more was a\u00a0sense of humor.<\/p>\n
To get through life, you’ve really got to be able to laugh. That especially includes being able to laugh at yourself when you’re a\u00a0fool.<\/p>\n
It’s also about being able to find ways to laugh even at\u00a0little things – to make humor where there isn’t any.<\/p>\n
Dad liked to play with words. He loved a bad pun, and never minded the groans and rolled eyes from his daughters.<\/p>\n
He loved to recite: ” ‘I see,’ said the blind man, as he picked up his hammer and saw.”<\/p>\n
When one of us girls\u00a0fell and scraped a knee, and came to Dad crying, he’d say, “Just think how good it will feel when it stops hurting!”<\/p>\n
Or his other line, “Just put a stone in your shoe and walk around, then you won’t even notice that knee.”<\/p>\n
He was the fun guy in any group. He’d be the one wearing a wig. He’d just walk into the room, all casual, straight face. The wigs were even funnier because he was actually bald.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I have an astonishing\u00a0number of photos of Dad wearing a wig.<\/p>\n
I don’t think I have any male friends who wear wigs just to amuse people.<\/p>\n
A couple weeks ago, Donald the elder plumber<\/a> said a word that I hadn’t heard since Dad died.<\/p>\n “We got one of those whatchamacallits,” he said.<\/p>\n That word gave me\u00a0such a pang.<\/p>\n Dad always used “whatchamacallit” when he couldn’t think of a name for an object – and sometimes he used it when he knew perfectly well what the name was, just because it made his daughters laugh.<\/p>\n He’d also use the similar words doohickey, thingamabob, whosis. <\/em>I don’t hear those words much either. Until Donald said whatchamacallit<\/em>, I had almost forgotten it.<\/p>\n I missed Dad\u00a0especially today. Nobody fooled me. Nobody\u00a0even tried to.\u00a0The day felt incomplete.<\/p>\n I’m trying to think how good it will feel when it stops hurting.<\/p>\n Today’s penny is a 2010, the year Dad left us, just a few days before April 1.<\/p>\n Really miss you, Daddy. Everyone does.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Aunts Clara and Bette showed up right on time to pick up Dad for a lunch outing that day. They pulled into the driveway – and got a shock. Dad came to the door in his bathrobe and staggered to the car, moaning. “Ohhhh, take me to the hospital!” he groaned. Alarmed, they helped him … read more No foolin’<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[319],"tags":[17,855,8,854,775,853,328,857,856,305],"class_list":["post-7485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inheritance","tag-17","tag-april","tag-dad","tag-fool","tag-humor","tag-joke","tag-laughter","tag-puns","tag-wig","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7485"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7496,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7485\/revisions\/7496"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}