Hauling Secrets

The other day Django and I did a job where the landlord had thrown all of a previous tenant’s possessions into the backyard. When we arrived, the new tenant came out to greet us and asked if we were there to get rid of the trash in the back. We were.

Only it wasn’t all trash. (Though you wouldn’t know it from the way it was all heaped in a pile.) There in a pile of old frames was a typewritten letter from the Air Force Headquarters of the U.S. Army, dated September 22, 1945. The main body of the letter read thusly:

In accordance with Par. 1d, letter Hq USAF CBI, file 200.6 dated 3 June 1944, subject: “War Department Awards Policy”, the following is the citation for the Bronze Star Medal awarded to 1st Lt., Roger McGregor, Signal Corp by Par. 2, General Order 355, this headquarters, dated 13 September 1945:

“For meritorious service from 1 April 1944 to 1 February 1945. This officer established and maintained a series of ground observation posts in forward areas, which were instrumental in preventing enemy aircraft from penetrating allied territory without being detected and reported to intercepting forces. To establish some of these advance air warning stations he frequently pushed deep into uncharted, enemy-held territory, and often narrowly escaped contact with Japanese patrols. His daring, stamina, and superior qualities of leadership enabled this officer to guide and direct his men in their hazardous undertakings. His accomplishments were substantial contributions to the success achieved by his organization.”

In the frame next to the letter was the actual bronze star, hanging by its little ribbon.

Then, in another frame, a handwritten letter:

Dear Mr. & Mrs. McGregor,

This is a belated reply to your reply to your letter concerning your son James. I would have liked to have writted sooner but being hospitalized, I found it difficult to do so.

I know that any poor words of mind can never lighten the burden of your sorrow. Only our Blessed Lord can do that. But in your grief you can be so very proud of James – pround to have been privileged to be the father and mother of one so close to God and his Blessed Mother.

God gave him to you knowing well that in your loving care he would grow and flower into that great Christian gentleman that he was. Now your work is over and God has reclaimed the great gift he gave you. If there is anything that will ease the ache in your hearts it will be the knowledge that God must love you both so very much to have entrusted such a one to you. May God bless you both.

I knew James for more than two years, lived in the same tent with him, slept and ate with him. As a priest I could never have asked for a better companion. He is loved not only be my but also by his men. They will never forget him.

I jumped from James’ plane often. Always immediately after him. It was a rare privilege. Many a laugh we had whether it was he who pulled me out or I who pushed him out. Now it is all over. But my fondest recollection of James is he and his battalion commander, Major Kellem, serving the last Mass we had for taking off for France. (James often served my Mass). The men often talked of it afterwards. The sight of them serving the mass, receiving Holy Communion, the last Blessing, was a sight that filled the men with a calmness and a fearlessness that comes from knowing we are in the presence of God.

James saved my life that night. I was injured on the Jump. He dragged me to safety. A few hours later he was dead. I shall always remember hi at Mass. It is the best way I know how to express my gratitude. I did not bury him, but two days later I blessed his grave.

I know you both are heartbroked at your loss. You always will be. If there is one who can and will ease the ache in your heart, it is the Mother of Sorrows. She also lost her son. May she comfort you in your grief. I shall remember you and yours in my Masses.

Sincerely in Christ,
Chaplain Mark O’Connor

I held on to these two letters for a few days, intending to post them here. Then, on my day off, I got an unexpected call from Bossman telling me he’s got someone on the phone claiming to have lost some valuable family heirlooms in a cleanout his landlord did. At first I didn’t think anything of it, but then Bossman said, passing along the pleas of the person in front of him at the office, “Something about a bronze star?” Apparently this guy was the nephew of the war hero from the letters. I knew that I had to return them.

And when I did, I recieved a third letter:

Smidge,
Thanks for your kindness and consideration! I am (was) the family historian. The barn was loaded with historical family things. My family is devastated by our loss. Your thoughtfulness will be well received by our family.
John McGregor

If I ever feel sketchy about looking through people’s discards and posting about their treasures here, I can think about this and remind myself that a little curiosity mixed with obsessive hoarding/archiving can be a good thing.

My ankle has mostly healed and I’m back to work. Thanks for all your well-wishes.

So the other day Wonderboy and I are cleaning out the place next to the maintenance garage at a huge student condo complex where all the residents throw out their large items before moving. The maintenance guy tells us they’ve had problems with new residents scavenging from these piles and complaining later about bedbugs. It’s pretty nasty. Mostly mattresses that have been sitting out getting rained on for weeks.

A completely waterlogged full-size futon cushion, by the way, is one of the heaviest and most awkward things a hauler will ever have to carry.

There’s a faint smell of skunk the whole time we’re doing this job. It gets stronger as we get deeper into the pile. The maintenance guy tells us they’ve been smelling it for weeks. So me and Wonderboy are expecting to see a skunk under every mattress that we pry up from the wet dirt. And when you’re expecting to see something, you start to think you see it everywhere. A few tense minutes go by before I uncover this:

I make a mad dash away before I realize that the skunk is dead. It must’ve been there for weeks. And we had to smell it for the time it took to load four truckloads of nasty student apartment castoffs.

Hauling is not all games and treasures. We have to go through things like this in order to get to the good stuff.

This is a story about an object I found at a job a few years ago. The object ended up being discovered by police officers in my car - which wouldn’t be noteworthy if it wasn’t for the nature of the object, which you’ll discover if you exercise a little patience and keep reading. It’ll be more fun that way.

I apologize for making you read all the buildup before the climax of this story. I know I’m not a good storyteller. I try hard to get every little detail right, where a good storyteller would stick to the important stuff and even invent details that make the story better. But because I felt I was somewhat wronged by the police officers during this incident, I scribbled furiously as soon as I got home so I could remember exactly how it happened. And so you know that every bit of what you’re reading now is the truth.

So I’m driving down this stretch of local highway that goes abruptly from 50mph to 35mph speed limit. To get down to 35mph as soon as the new limit is posted, most vehicles would have to brake a little bit. None ever do. So it’s 8 o’clock at night, no other cars nearby, and I’m at about 40mph coasting down from 50 to 35, when the light in front of me changes to yellow.

I start to brake, but it’s February and I’ve become accustomed to winter driving conditions, so instead of slamming on the breaks and possibly fishtailing or stopping a little bit past the line, I decide to coast through the light. I see it cycle to red a split second before it goes out of view past my windshield. The next thing I notice is the flashing lights of a police car behind me.

When the officer approaches my window, I immediately hand him all the required paperwork. Politely addressing him as ‘Sir’, I tell him that I tried to stop. He accuses me of accelerating through the light, which is simply untrue. I’m a little puzzled. Either the officer is lying, or he hadn’t seen the incident very well, in which case he should not be making that kind of accusation. I reply politely something to the effect that if he’d been looking he would clearly have seen my brake lights.

He then accuses me of speeding, which is also untrue. I deny this also. Then he asks me if I’ve had any drugs. I say “No sir”. He asks again, slowly. Again I say no. He then asks if I have anything I shouldn’t have in my car. I say firmly, “No sir.” He asks again. Perplexed, I quickly scan the empty seats of my car, look back at the officer, and say, “No, sir. I don’t have anything I shouldn’t have in my car.” He asks, “Are you sure?” I say, “Yes, sir, I’m sure.”

Then comes the kicker. The officer shines his flashlight in my face and says, “You’re saying one thing, but your eyes are telling me another.” Thinking that it must have been my quick scan of the empty car seats that seemed suspicious, I explain to him, “Sir, I’m nervous.” (After all, there I am giving a man with a gun an answer he clearly does not want to hear.)

He then asks, “Would you mind if I searched your vehicle?” I think about it for a second and reply, calmly, “In fact I would mind. I would rather you not search my vehicle.” I realize now that this is not the textbook phrase to use to refuse a search from a police officer, but at the time it seemed a reasonable enough way of asserting what I assumed to be my rights. But the officer responds by immediately asking me to step out of my vehicle. I do so with no argument or hesitation.

He pats me down, makes me lift up my jacket and shirt, and asks me several more times if I’ve been using or possess drugs. I reiterate my denial. He seems to be annoyed that I’m giving him a hard time, instead of the other way around. In a tone that conveys that annoyance, he asks if I’m going to make him have to call for the drug-sniffing dogs. (His choice of words here, and in general the subtleties of police language, is important: if *I*am going to make him have to call….) When I question whether or not he’s allowed to do that, to make me wait there, he says in a commanding tone “You WILL wait here!” and heads back to his car with my paperwork.

At this point it seems I have no choice but to submit to whatever it is the police have in mind for me, despite any protest I offer.

As he goes back to his car, another, younger officer walks up to me. This is the first time I realize that another car has pulled up behind the first officer’s car. The younger officer studies my appearance and says, in a condescending way, “Didn’t get much sleep last night, did you?” Baffled, I ask him what he means. “Your eyes,” he answers. Only then do I realize that he might be referring to what remained of a black eye I’d recieved from a soccer game the week before. I explain this to the officer and try to show him that my right eye doesn’t have the same yellowish bag underneath, but he seems to care little about my explanation as he acknowledges it with a patronizing “whatever-you-say” kind of nod.

(I should mention that at this point I’ve failed to make the connection between my bruised eye and the first officer’s statement, “You’re saying one thing, but your eyes are telling me another.”)

So Cop #2 is standing there, apparently to make sure that I keep standing there while the Cop #1 calls for dogs. I appeal to the younger officer, who seems about my age, to call off what he will soon find out is a big waste of everyone’s time. When I plead with him to tell the first officer that I have a black eye if that was the only thing that was keeping me there, he suggests that I smell like marijuana. Again, I’m baffled. The first officer hadn’t mentioned smelling anything. I invite Cop #2 to come and smell me as close as he wants, since I don’t even smoke cigarettes. He declines my offer, indicating that his nose isn’t functioning properly and gesturing in the first officer’s direction to suggest that it was the first officer’s suspicions I had aroused, not his. I appeal to him, saying that it’s terribly cold outside and we both have better things to do, etc. He appears to level with me, agreeing that it was cold outside and saying that he didn’t want to be there either. Yet he remains there.

Finally, frustrated at my apparent powerlessness over what I perceive to be the imminent unlawful search of my vehicle, I give the first bit of disrespect I have until now been only getting and say: “Spare me the good-cop/bad-cop bullshit.” Now I’m not trying to be all bad-ass because I swore at a cop. I realize that that was an extremely stupid thing to say, and I’m actually embarrassed about it, but if you’d have been there and seen the way they were treating me, you might understand. Anyway, after I say it, for the first time the officer becomes interested in what I have to say and assumes a more animated posture to bellow, “Don’t you get lippy with me!”

I see that I have aroused something in him and quickly apologize for my “lippiness” and explain that I’m frustrated about my rights and so on. He makes it clear to me that my options are to have the car searched by hand now, or to wait for the dogs to come later. Since I have an appointment to make, I give up and tell him to tell the first officer that I consent to being searched now.

By this time the first officer should have pulled up my information to find a clean driving record and no criminal history. Having been employed to drive trucks throughout greater Anytown for over three years, I can say without any exaggeration that I have logged more drive-time than anyone I know my age. And in my many years of driving experience, I’ve had only one previous infraction, a minor speeding ticket I got over four years ago.

Still, while the younger officer searches my car, the first officer comes back and asks me several more times if I smoke marijuana. He says, as a kind of baiting tactic I assume, that he doesn’t care if I have a small amount in my possession for personal use. I keep assuring him that I have none and that the other officer would find nothing in my car, when all of a sudden I realized that there was something to be found in my car. Nothing illegal, but something, well, interesting, considering the situation.

Here’s where my hauling job comes in. A few months before this, me and my old partner Legendary Bobby Gene are doing our last job of the day, a cleanout of a two-car garage filled with renovation debris. All scrap wood in a giant messy pile. It takes us a long time to get to the bottom of the pile, where we discover, inexplicably, sitting there on the concrete floor…a dildo! Nicely sized and lifelike, with veins running along its rubbery length. [Click here to see a picture of it.]

So naturally I pick the thing up with my workgloves and start taunting Legendary Bobby Gene with it. He pretends to be disgusted but becomes more and more playful. This little game continues as we finish the job and return our truck to its assigned parking spot, where my car is waiting to take us back to the office to turn in the day’s paperwork. So eventually the dildo ends up in my car, underneath the passenger seat where LBG had left it, completely forgotten until that moment in this story when, faced with the reality of a cop searching my car, I’m forced to think of what he might find mingled with the coins and dustbunnies underneath my seat.

So I tell the cop a lighter version of that little story, leaving out the part about us playing around with the dildo of course. I tell him I’m a hauler and we find some interesting things, and sometimes we keep those intersting things, and, well, the other day…. The cop gives me a stonefaced look and says, “You’re sure you haven’t been smoking anything?” I assure him I haven’t, and we talk there for about another minute until the younger cop jumps out of my car and shouts, “He’s got a dildo in there!” Those words, his exact words, so informational on paper, aren’t quite as memorable as the way he said them and the expression on his face at that moment. But somehow they have the effect of immediately defusing the situation. The tension leaves the air, and I feel relieved as the cop who’s been questioning me walks the cop who’s been doing the searching back to their cars.

While I wait for them to come back, all I can think about is that moment when the cop had to feel around under my seat, grasp that pink shaft with his hand and pull it out to see what he’s holding. Thinking about this, I am happy.

When they come back, after a few minutes, they’re more polite to me, although they still give me a ticket for running a red light, which is worth it in the end. I got a pretty good story out of it. So, no doubt, did the cops.

POSTCRIPT: I told this story at a Show and Tell party once, with the dildo all dramatically hidden in a paper bag until I whipped it out. Later at the party, I went out onto the porch to get a beer, and the lady who was sitting alone out there smoking a cigarette turned to me and said, matter-of-factly, “You know, young man, I have that very same model in a cupboard at home.”

Hidden among the pages of the Deutschland Erwacht I found was a mysterious leaflet printed in German and English.

The Safe Conduct Pass, or “passierschien”, was produced by the Psychological Warfare Branch of Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, designed to look as official as possible, and eventually dropped into German territory to inform German soldiers of the decent treatment they’d recieve if they surrendered. It has been called “the most effective leaflet of the war”. This version of the leaflet, one of 10,456,000 printed, was dropped from November 1944 to January 1945. The front reads, in German and in English:

SAFE CONDUCT. The German soldier who carries this safe conduct is using it as a sign of his genuine wish to give himself up. He is to be disarmed, to be well looked after, to receive food and medical attention as required and to be removed from the danger zone as soon as possible. (Signed) Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force “

On the back:

The BASIC PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW REGARDING PRISONERS OF WAR (According to the Hague Convention, 1907, and the Geneva Convention, 1929)

1. From the moment of surrender, German soldiers are regarded as P.O.W.s and come under the protection of the Geneva Convention. Accordingly, their military honor is fully respected.
2. P.O.W.s must be taken to assembly points as soon as possible, which are far enough from the danger zone to safeguard their personal security.
3. P.O.W.s receive the same rations, qualitatively and quantitatively, as members of the Allied armies, and, if sick or wounded, are treated in the same hospitals as Allied troops.
4. Decorations and valuables are to be left with the P.O.W.s. Money may be taken only be officers of the assembly points and receipts must be given.
5. Sleeping quarters, accommodation, bunks and other installations in P.O.W. camps must be equal to those of Allied garrison troops.
6. According to the Geneva Convention, P.O.W.s must not become subject of reprisals nor be exposed to public curiosity. After the end of the war they must be sent home as soon as possible.

Soldiers in the meaning of the Hague Convention (IV, 1907) are: All armed persons, who wear uniforms or any insignias which can be recognized from a distance.

The diagonal overprint reads, “Also valid for the Volkssturm” (the territorial army to defend the homefront in WWII).

This leaflet was so effective that the Germans issued a parody of it, with the text on the front changed:

The German soldier who carries this safe conduct is using it as a sign of his genuine wish to go into captivity for the next ten years, to betray his fatherland, to return home a broken old man and very probably never see his parents, wife and children again. (Signed) Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force.

Ouch. On the backside, replacing the Geneva Conventions, is a message to the Allied Forces:

DEAR FRIENDS: We are returning your age old dodge, after having made the necessary rectifications, with sincerest thanks. It was highly amusing, and we must commend you on your efforts. But please refrain from molesting us further in this direction. It should be obvious to you that the ideals for which 90 million Germans have fought (according to Churchill) “like lions” for over five years cannot be so very rotten that we could be lured into surrender through mere ham and eggs. Hoping that we can rely on your sagacity to comprehend, we remain as of old, with Heil Hitler! Hard times, what?

History has shown just how tempting those “ham and eggs” (or the Geneva Conventions) were to many German soldiers, and how hard those times really were for Hitler and the German Army. At that point, the Red Army had driven the last German troops from Soviet territory and began entering Central Europe, and the western allies were also rapidly advancing into Germany. A few more months and Hitler would be dead, the war officially over.

[Special thanks to Sergeant Major Herbert A. Friedman, whose excellent article at Psywarrior.com’s Allied ‘Passierschien’ Safe Conduct Passes of WWII page provided everything I needed to identify this document.]

So me and Legendary Bobby Gene knock on the front door of this house - no answer. We hear noises, so we follow the driveway around to the back, where an old woman and two middle-aged women have the contents of an extra-deep two-car garage - almost a barn, really - spilling out into the backyard. One of the ladies explains to me and LBG that their father passed away and they plan to sell the house. Only first they have to empty “Dad’s Garage”.

“Dad’s Garage”, it turns out, was a place where only Dad could go. It was off limits even to his wife, who during the job was working in a manic way beside us, expressing an oddly hesitant surprise at each new thing she brought out into the light. But it’s normal for family of the deceased not to want to deal with - or even to know - what their loved one left behind. That’s what haulers are for.

Because I like to salvage as much as can be salvaged, and because I have somewhat of an athropological curiosity, I’m the kind of hauler who glances in bags. Sometimes, even when they’re tightly sealed - okay, especially then - I’ll rip them open. But always discreetly, away from the customer and anyone else. So when one of the daughters said what to me are magic words - “We have no idea what’s in there!” - I started stealing glances into the bags and boxes I was hauling every chance I got. Among the things I later discovered had been hidden in the depths of this garage were the following:

• Hundreds of gun magazines.
• Hundreds of hot rod car magazines.
• A few boxes of books from the Loompanics catalogue - and others - dealing with how to make explosives from household chemicals, how to blow up bridges and other structures, and how to completely change your identity.
• Membership material and other correspondences from little-known Southern-based militia groups.
• Roughly one thousand VHS tapes, each with three or four movies on it. That adds up an entire video store worth of movies. Nothing obscure or exotic, no preponderance of any particular genre or era, just a seemingly random - though totally exhaustive - rundown of the movies shelved at any old corporate rental house. A complete set. As if every single movie the guy ever watched - he recorded.

And this:

DEUTSCHLAND ERWACHT (Germany Awakens or Germany Wake Up!), is what’s known as a Cigarette Card Album of pictures depicting the rise of the Nazi Movement, published as a cooperative effort between the central offices of the Nazi Party and the Cigarette Picture Service in Hamburg. People would buy cigarette packs and collect pictures to paste into the plates of the book. Pictures like these:

(Yes, that’s Hitler feeding a fawn and Goebbels handing out candy to children.)

The person who owned this particular book was rigorous in their collecting and filled every single plate with EVERY SINGLE CARD from the cigarette packs. That’s over 200 total pictures, 62 of them in vivid color. A complete set. And the last page of the book is a fold out wide angle shot of a Nuremberg rally spanning 5 whole pages. [I’ll be doing a whole ‘nother post on the slip of paper that fell out of the book as I was leafing through. It adds another interesting piece to the puzzle.]

Adding in your mind this collectable Nazi propaganda book with some of the other things from the off-limits-to-everyone garage - books on how to change your identity, links to racist militias - you start to imagine things.

You can learn a lot about someone by their trash. But anything from which you can learn a lot about a person can also make you think you’ve learned a lot about the person. As the potential for understanding grows, so does the potential for misunderstanding. So I’m not jumping to any conclusions here. But still, you start to wonder…

Every now and then a story comes on the evenings news about another Nazi war criminal found hiding in your average American suburb. Who knows how many others have died and taken their secrets to the grave. And how many haulers have hauled their secrets to the landfill…?

It’s winter here in Anytown. Over the last few weeks, The Edge, without really trying, has been wowing me during walks up clients’ driveways with his incredible ice-sliding ability. No doubt he is just trying to amuse himself during the duller of those cold trudges. But the other day when we did a job at a house on a hill with a 150-ft long driveway, my challenge to the Edge was irresistable:

Probably some of my favorite aspects about hauling are the images we get to see daily that typical jobs just don’t allow their employees to see. Above is what I like to call the flight of the dump birds. All those tiny black things are actually birds and represent only about a third of the birds that hang out at the dump, picking at the loose garbage. When you drive up to dump there seem to be a wall of tiny black birds just watching you go about your day, kind of creepy sometimes.

Some of you may be confused as to exactly what it means to be a hauler. I have a prime example of the work that we do as haulers, presented in words and pictures from a garage cleanout Smidge and I did today.

As haulers we take this:

And turn it into this:

It is all too common for us to open a client’s garage and be greeted with a sight like what you see in that first picture. However something very uncommon was lurking under this particular pile of garage garbage. Something nasty. Something foul beyond words. Something… dead.

Buried under the debris toward the front of the garage was a bucket filled with a mysterious black liquid. Now, liquids are one of the only things we are not licensed to haul in our truck, so Smidge took the bucket to the side of the driveway to empty it.

Bad idea.

These poor bastards took shelter in the wrong garage. Little did they know they were stumbling into the den of a sadistic serial mouse killer. Why would you drown mice in a bucket of water? More importantly, WHY WOULD YOU LET SAID BUCKET OF DEATH WATER FESTER IN YOUR GARAGE FOR THE OBLIVIOUS HAULERS TO STUMBLE ACROSS??

I was going to throw in one more picture of an inexplicable advertisement we found at the same job, but it’s late and I’m tired so it’ll have to wait til tomorrow.

At the end of the other day the sky looked like this.

Its strange to say but undeniable once said, we all have a style of hauling. (I admit I exemplify the more awkward style of hauling.) But style exists independent of how good a hauler you are.

It can all be thought about much like the hip-hop sense of “flow”. Some artists have awkward flow, like Biz Markie or Ol’ Dirty Bastard, but that does not mean they have any less “street cred”. People who enjoy ODB can certainly enjoy Jay-Z, who has immaculate flow. On to my example of my awkward hauling flow.

One of the more disgusting items I hauled the other day was a mattress that looked like it was made of fur. Upon seeing the fur I thought to myself, “Shouldn’t I scrape off the fur before lifting this? It will get everywhere.” Then I paused. Then thought, “Nah! I’ll just try to carry it slowly as to not disturb the fur.” And as you can imagine my well intentioned plan backfired when cat hair went everywhere: the floor, the walls, my clothes, in my mouth. It reminded me much of the infamous “I’ll break the large pane of glass to make it more manageable” incident of 2006. Such is a minor incident of my awkward awkward style.

I debated for a while what I should write as my inagural post to this blog. Since Smidge decided to have a little fun at my expense with his first post, I figured it would only be fair for me to return the favor.

When I first started working as a hauler I thought that a fair amount of our customers would be the attractive “desperate housewive” type, but nothing could be further from the truth. We do a lot of work for contractors, realtors and old couples; but rarely any attractive females. Therefore when we DO encounter a beautiful woman it sometimes throws us off our game a bit.

On this particular day Smidge and I arrived at the jobsite and knocked on the front door, only to have our socks knocked off by the beautiful being that opened the door. She was a goddess: long dark hair, perfect figure, and the kind of smile that would melt the heart of a serial killer. In a nutshell, this woman was DROP DEAD GORGEOUS.

Before I go any further I need to mention our “sales routine”. We have a price sheet that we carry around on a clipboard, and before each job one of the two crewmembers is designated as “salesman” for that particular job. The salesman carries the clipboard, explains the prices and does most of the interacting with the customer.

Thankfully Smidge was holding the clipboard for this job, because when this vixen opened the door I temporarily forgot how to speak English. Luckily for both of us Smidge recovered rather well. He quoted the job and she agreed to have us remove her unwanted items. It was a typical job: a couch, a few matresses and a bag or two of household items. After doing the work Smidge walked up to her to see if she had anything else she wanted to get rid of.

What followed was the mother of all Freudian slips: “Is there anything else you’d like us to do to you?”

Silence.

Smidge turns bright red. “Er, FOR you, anything else we can do FOR you?” By this point my back was turned and I was walking back to the truck. I managed to cork my laughter until I was out of earshot, but barely made it in the truck before I couldn’t contain myself. I laughed HARD, I laughed until I cried, and I never let him hear the end of it.