Payback Is Hell

Sometimes, I still hear him laugh.

Several years ago, while mowing the yard, Catfish somehow failed to see a 6 foot umbrella lying in the yard.  He destroyed both the umbrella and the hours old lawn mower.

I heard him laugh then.  I could see him tilt his head back just a bit, and look toward the sky as he chuckled. It was a ‘I’ve been there, done that and bought the t-shirt’ laugh. I haven’t heard him laugh all that much in the last seventeen years, but he laughed at that. In his pale blue eyes, you could see his memories of my many misadventures as a child, and in the echo of his chuckles, you could tell he was enjoying this way too much.

I remember, once I told him about something absurd that Catfish had done, he laughed a little and looked at me with smiling eyes, and said “Son, has he burned the house down yet?”.

I had to answer ‘No, sir. No, he hasn’t.’

“Well, I’m one up on you then, aren’t I?”, he replied And he threw his head back just a little, and laughed. I laughed, too.

When he laughed, sometimes he laughed with his whole body. Sometimes, it was just his eyes. Sometimes you could tell when he was laughing just by the way he was standing, even when he wasn’t making a sound, and sometimes, it was just that look in his eyes.  He loved to laugh.

As my daughters grew older, and accomplished greater and greater things, I heard from him at graduations. He didn’t laugh at graduations.  He was proud. He smiled really big. He had two gold teeth way back in his mouth, and when each of girls graduated from college, and when they got their advanced degrees, I’ll bet you could see both of those gold teeth.

Catfish has survived his teenage years and has embarked on his journey into adulthood.  I suspect I’ll hear from him more often as Ratboy learns about life. I know he’s looking forward to this. Payback is hell.