A Time and Place for the Best Joke Ever

Whereas most kids piss off their parents during their teen years, I waited until I was 35 before my dad honestly wanted to kill me.

We were driving home from musky fishing in Kenora, Canada and he arranged for us to stop at a resort on Lake of the Woods to solicit some possible business. We found the gravel road that turned into two tracks in the dirt, as we drove 45 minutes off of the beaten path to this backwoods getaway.

We were met by one of the camp's employees, and he was visibly shaken. He was white as a sheet. I rolled down the window and we asked for the camp's owner by name and told him that we had an appointment.

He said, "There's been a tragedy, a death in camp. Please drive over to the parking lot and wait for us there." He told us that we had to park in an area over by the boat pier and I drove my truck over.

As I parked the car we gazed out onto a picturesque scene that would get weird on careful scrutiny. The Canadian July sun illuminated an extensive bay with colorful trees and pristine water underneath the blue sky. The camp was eerily quiet and the boats were frozen in their docked positions. Next to the boats, in the center of the pier, 50 feet in front of us, was a dead guy. There he was, laying on his back, hands at his sides, decked out in his fishing duds, like he was taking a nap in a bad place.

The camp employee came over and told us that this guy was 55 years old and had been visiting the camp for 17 years. He had apparently had a heart attack out on the boat and by the time they got him back to shore he was dead. His friends were shattered, the camp staff was stricken, and they had to leave him there in the hot sun until the coroner arrived. Everyone was just blown away by the tragedy.

This hit a little too close to home for my dad. It just turned out that he too was a tubby, 55-year-old guy that had been visiting the same camp in Canada for 17 years. He was clearly affected. As he absorbed the surreal scene he quietly contemplated his own mortality. He said sheepishly, "This is horrible, I wonder when they are going to move him?"...

And I had to blurt out, "They better, this is a no wake zone!”

A mean stare and a stern backhand to the side of my head reminded me that there is a time and a place for the perfect joke, and sometimes laughing to oneself inside might sometimes be the better venue for a solid, yet inappropriate piece of comedy.