Entertainer Extraordinaire

Those of you who were present at Thursday nights festivities can attest to Jack's storytelling abilities. Although I thought I made it clear that he was not invited, since it is his house, we let him visit with us for a while. And oh the joy that abounded from our living room as Jack got comfortable with his audience.

He entertained for an hour, mostly with his stories about an interesting young man, who shall be referred to herein only as "Frost the Mute." When Jack gets going, it's hard to slow him down. He gets very enthusiastic when telling a story, often going to extremes to demonstrate the action for his audience.

One of my favorite Jack stories involves a certain establishment, dubbed by Jack as the "Land Of Wandering Employee Shmucks." You do the math. Jack frequents this establishment, often multiple times daily, to purchase items for work. One instance involved him attempting to return an item that did not work. He approached the counter with a large sign proclaiming it to be "CUSTOMER SERVICE" which is a rather ironic title considering how little the employees of this company care for their customers.

He explained to the 18-year-old "customer service expert" that he had just bought this tool, the tool did not work, he was not happy about it. He wanted another one immediately. Her response? A very matter-of-fact, "Go get it," as she continued to peck away at her keyboard.

Jack's eyebrows raised in surprise. There was only one explanation for her rudeness. So he asked her, "Is this your first day?"

To which she replied, "I been here for six month."

Jack: "You've been WHERE for six months? Hiding in the crapper?"

While she was not amused, Jack, as he often does, found himself quite hilarious but was eventually able to recover, go get a replacement tool and check out, with another customer service expert, of course.

I'd also like to bring up the fact that Jack has always been a comedian. When in high school, he always got good grades, but there was one instance where a teacher returned a paper to him with a less than satisfactory grade placed upon it.

His response? "I should have worked harder on this paper. I'm very sorry. I'll do better next time."

Nay.

Instead, he placed the blame exactly where it belonged. On the young teacher, who clearly didn't know good writing when she saw it. How dare she give him such a bad grade?

So, in front of the entire classroom, he asked her what did she think was the worst way to die? And also, did she have fire insurance on her home? All in good fun, of course. Until he got home and found out the principal had tattled on him to his parents. His punishment? An apology and he had to offer to mow her lawn for free for the whole summer. Wonder why she didn't accept?

Jack is also a mighty hunter. Until recently, we lived out in the country with our landlord's hunting land right outside our door. Since we saw deer in our yard all the time, Jack would occasionally feel the urge to "go hunting."

His idea of hunting, however, is him sitting in his nice, warm truck with a shotgun pointed out the window. I kid you not. On many occasions, he would call me in a whisper and tell me to be real quiet when I drove up the driveway because he was "hunting."

One December morning, around 4:30, Jack is restless and decides to "go hunting" in his truck. He rustles around the bedroom, looking for his gun and ammo, changing clothes, etc. Of course this wakes me up. After about 15 minutes of "hunting," he finally realizes that in December, the sun doesn't come up until after 6, and he can't see a thing in the thick darkness outside. So he comes back in, makes some more noise, and I finally decide I'm not getting back to sleep.

Since Christmas was only a few days away, we decided to beat the crowd and go get some Wal Mart shopping out of the way at 5 am. We took my little Altima, but he carefully placed his loaded gun in the backseat, "in case we see a deer when we get back."

When we got back, the sun was up and as we were about to find out, so were the neighbors. As we neared the driveway, Jack eased the gun out of the back seat, and, just in case, went ahead and pointed it out his window. We slowly pulled into the driveway and drove past the neighbors house. There at the window was our neighbor, naked, standing in shock as we drove past him, Jack pointing a loaded gun right at him.

We didn't speak to the neighbors for a long time after that. Jack didn't get a deer that season, but he did let me shoot one on Christmas Eve.

Call me Deerslayer.