Tales From The Lebowskis - Diane Thirty: Unscripted

I've been blessed with two terrific parents. It's a corny thing to say, yes, but true nonetheless. There is much I've learned from each of them, and much I could say about each of them as well. Today though, I'd like to take a moment to talk about one of the traits that runs on the Lebowski side of the family: a quick wit. All of the children of the Lebowski-Jerboa union share this trait to a greater or lesser degree, and most of the grandchildren as well (I flatter myself amongst the grandchildren of wit). While she may not be as much of a natural spotlight-magnet as her younger siblings Hulka and Patty, my mother possesses the gift of a quick wit in spades. She is less of a storyteller, her gift is in her ability to play along with a situation or mutter a quick retort. Here are a collection of some of my favorite Diane Thirty off-the-cuff witticisms.

At a birthday dinner for Holly Lebowski (Hulka's beloved wife), we were all seated around a table in a restaurant. My mother is very particular about certain foods, and insists on only ever using REAL butter for her bread/rolls, not margarine. So when the basket of rolls arrived to the table with a mix of butter and margarine packets, she was nervous. The basket was going the wrong way around the table from her, and she was carefully watching as the stock of real butters gradually depleted. Eventually, the basket reached the diner directly to her right, her brother David "Blaze" Lebowski, with only 1 real butter left. Now, David is a scheming sort of guy, always up to do something to get a rise out of someone (another trait that runs in the family), so I can't say I blame my mother 100% for the preemptive strike she was about to launch, but it seemed harsh nonetheless.

As soon as the basket of rolls reached David's hands, it was slapped out of them, onto the table as my mother warned him, without a hint of warmth in her voice, "Don't even think about it, fuckhead." [alternative heard as "don't even think about it, dickhead."] She quickly snatched the last butter out of the basket and turned back to her conversation with my father, leaving David with his jaw on the table and only margarine for his roll. Now, I realize that wasn't a particularly "witty" comment to lead the tales of wit, but it was hilarious, fuckhead.

One Christmas in our old house, probably when I was about 13, 14 or so my mother had ordered a large leather recliner for my father for Christmas. It was a warm Christmas Eve that year, with very little, if any, snow on the ground. I recall being sent out onto the deck at some point in the morning with a bag of stale Rice Krispies to throw out to the birds. The house was built into a hillside, and the deck wrapped around from the side of the house where it was just a few steps up from the driveway to the back of the house where it stood above the slider doors to the finished part of the basement. I was feeling particularly lazy, and didn't feel like throwing handful after handful of cereal out onto the lawn proper, so I stood at the deck railing in the rear of the house and just upended the bag, dumping a pile of cereal down 1 story to the ground below where it remained.

Later that day, Dad's new chair arrived. My mother guided the deliverymen down from the driveway to the backyard and around to the basement doors to bring the chair in. She then noticed that to do so, they'd have to walk through a pile of Rice Krispies. Thinking quickly of a way to save face, she let the delivery man know that she'd asked her son to feed the birds that morning. But her son, she claimed, had Down's Syndrome, and didn't understand the task. How do I know she said this? After they left, she came upstairs and told me so. Angrily. As if it were my fault she lied and said I had Down's Syndrome.

Now, my cousin, Derek Dynamo, does in fact have Down's Syndrome, and he is one of the kindest-hearted young men you'd ever hope to meet, a real sensitive guy who loves his family and loves to make people laugh. One day my mother was sitting with her sisters, Susan (Derek's mother), and Patty chatting with their mother, Nonnie, and HER sister, Aunt Claire Philbert. Aunt Claire sometimes has a funky thought process, and doesn't quite follow exactly what's going on (but she is a very sweet and good person). At this particular time, Susan was talking about the accommodations Derek gets at school, including a dedicated para-educator. However, Aunt Claire didn't hear para-educator. Instead, she looked confused and asked my mother to clarify for her sister, just exactly, "what does the parrot do?". Now, my mother could've explained that Derek did not, in fact, have a parrot educator, but instead opted to tell her that the parrot uses its claws and beak to sharpen Derek's pencils. Aunt Claire looked not at all less confused by this, but blinked, nodded her acceptance, and sat back in her chair. To my knowledge, she has not, to this day, been corrected.

The final moment of unscripted, muttered wit I'll share today happened during a family game of Monopoly Junior. Monopoly Junior is like regular monopoly, but with fewer properties, set in an amusement park, and with the dollar values greatly reduced, usually by a factor of $100 or so. Also, the man currently officially known as Mr. Monopoly featured more prominently in the various cards and properties. However, Mr. Monopoly went by a different name back then. Back then, he was Rich Uncle Pennybags.

It was a typical family board game, the type pictured in print ads for the very same board games. All four members of the Thirty family were sitting on the living room rug, Steven and Diane Thirty patiently playing this childrens' game with Meghan and I. Mom was not winning though, and was becoming mildly annoyed with her poor luck. She rolled, and landed on one of the card drawing spaces, taking a card. She grumbled about how she had to pay back a $3 loan to her rich uncle. However, her description of this was "Oh, damn it, fine, pay $3 to Uncle Peniswhistle." Meghan and I laughed so hard we couldn't finish the game.

Uncle Peniswhistle.

Hahahahaha, it's still funny.