A fun guy

While Darling Daughter and her Prince Charming and I were at the wedding last weekend, PC told me a story that still makes me chuckle. I hope I can tell it right here; it's just too precious to lose.

PC probably met the kids' grandparents the first time he came back to Texas after he moved to Los Angeles, and Granddad spoke fondly of him frequently in the months before he died; if he had any reservations about him, he never let me know.

On one of their visits, PC had told a joke as a way of making conversation:

A mushroom walked into a bar, but the bartender told him, "We don't serve your kind."

"Why not? I'm a fun guy!" came the answer.

PC figured the joke was innocuous enough for a fourth-grader, so he was a little flummoxed when Granddad didn't laugh. The English teacher in me had quickly processed the joke this way:

Okay, the joke is supposed to be on a mushroom being a fungi, but that doesn't work because "fungi" is plural. If PC just told it wrong, maybe two mushrooms walked into the bar, but then it would be "fun guys," and that wouldn't work, either. So the joke has to depend on the listener knowing that mushrooms are fungi but not being too picky about whether "fungi" is plural or singular. I can do that.

But I also knew Granddad, and he couldn't possibly have been upset about the grammar error. He held a college degree and had graduated from Baptist seminary so he could serve a career as an Air Force chaplain, but he admitted that he had struggled with English all his life and had worked hard to get through school. The fungus/fungi problem would probably never have made his radar.

Then PC told me the rest of the story:

Granddad had let the joke hang in the air for a couple of beats, then broke the uncomfortable silence with his simple explanation:

"I just don't like those racial jokes," he said.