captain_slinky | 074 - Profiles Of My Life: Uncle Jed

This time it's over to my Dad's side of the family to talk about his Cousin/Brother, Jed (or Jerry, or Gerald, depending on who you talk to). Jed was my Dad's cousin that was pretty much raised as a brother right along with him, which is something you could totally do back in the 1940's. He lived in Alaska, and had the same birthday as me. Visits from Uncle Jed were rare for most of my childhood, but then became a fairly regular part of my life at around 1986 when he moved (temporarily) back to our home town of Anacortes. Once he was living here, he became a staple of my Dad's life and, by default, mine. The way that he and my Dad would interact and just keep building off each other till neither could breathe through the laughter when they were together, is the way I try to interact with my own best friends.

The defining Uncle Jed memory for me, was something he wasn't even there for. It was a 30-minute cassette tape that he had sent to my Dad with no explanation.

WHat Jed had done, was he kept one of those one-speaker tape recorders near his favorite chair at home... and recorded EVERY SINGLE TIME he farted. Enough to fill both 15-minute sides of a 30-minute cassette tape. Occasionally you would hear him giggle afterwards, or you'd hear his girlfriend ask "Jerry, what are you - OH MY GOD ARE YOU RECORDING YOUR FARTS AGAIN?!?!" followed by a fart and lots of his giggling... and one time - ONE TIME on the tape he said, after passing gas "Ha ha ha huh uhmm... uh oh."

So my Dad and I played that tape far too many times and shed far too many laugh-tears in doing so, and the next time we saw Jed we played it for him and he swore that he had never heard the tape before but the guy sure plays a mean trombone, which made us all collapse in t a pile of uncontrollable gasping laughter.

I wish I knew what happened to that cassette tape )