The Dow Is Up!

Last weekend, The Wife and I headed up to the Pondarosa, our family’s house in Wisconsin. My mother came up with us, which was nice. Although I definitely felt like I was reliving my early childhood with 4 people and a dog loaded into my pick-up truck. (Only when I was a child, it was 5 people (3 kids) and a dog. And one bench seat. My parents were simply crazy.)
It wasn’t a very eventful weekend up there. It seldom is. But this was a particularly uneventful weekend because it was too cold to go swimming and too warm to go sledding. So Saturday night, we were flipping through the channels and came across the movie Airplane, one of my all-time favorite movies. It’s one of the best-written movies and certainly one of the funniest. But I never realized just how scary it was.

In one scene, the pilot becomes incapacitated and the plane starts to dive. Elaine doesn’t know what to do. The ground control tells her to turn on the autopilot. And so she flips a switch and an inflatable pilot (Otto) slowly morphs into being. (By the way, it wasn’t until I was about 20 that I realized that “autopilot” didn’t really work this way.)

As soon as Luke saw Otto, he started screaming. He did NOT like Otto. As soon as Otto left the screen, Luke was happy. And whenever he reappeared, Luke would get upset. This actually became very entertaining for sick, twisted parents like The Wife and I. We began joking about how Luke’s going to be scared of inflatables as he grows up. This could prove to be quite a problem around holiday time since every lawn seemingly HAS to have an inflatable in it. (I’m willing to accept this for Christmas, and maybe even Halloween. But Arbor Day? Do you really need an inflatable tree?)

By the way, my favorite exchange in Airplane (besides the jive-talking) is:
Doctor: How soon can you land this plane?
Pilot: I can’t tell.
Doctor: I’m a doctor, you can tell me anything.
Pilot: Not for another couple hours.
Doctor: You can’t tell me for another couple hours?
Pilot: No, we can’t land for another couple hours.

This is the humor I love the most. Which is why I purposely obfuscate whatever I can. (Think I have a word-a-day calendar?) I think misunderstandings are funny. I realize it’s extremely annoying to other people (just ask The Wife). But I can’t help it. I think I might be a long-lost Marx Brother.