The Story of Funny Faces

I only saw my father cry twice.

He was crippled up with Progressive Supra-Nuclear Palsy both times. The worst kind of Parkinsonism you can get. That wasn’t why he was crying though. Muhammed Ali’s neurologist said my father’s PSP had two features worse than just regular PSP. Most people with that severe PSP don’t survive for more than a year. My Dad lasted eight.

He could take that. The first time he really cried was when his best friend’s son died in a plane crash. He cried so hard. He was so upset it really startled me. It made me think of how much more he would cry if I had died. That is when I knew, really knew that my father loved me.

The second time I saw him really break down was about two months after September 11, 2001. He had read a story in a magazine about a little girl whose father died in the towers. She said she would never see his funny face again.

When I spoke about all this in his eulogy after he died in 2003, I told about how much my Dad loved to make Funny Faces with his kids. It was his favorite thing to do. The last thing I said was that he was the “The King of Funny Faces.”

Sometime around 2008, I realized this:  

The King is Dead! Long live the King of Funny Faces!

9/11/11

I was with my father 10 years ago today. I was getting ready for work upstairs when I saw the towers begin to fall. I ran down crazily to tell him "The twin towers are collapsing." He couldn't believe it until I turned on the TV and there they were. He told me to go to work. I worked in Secaucus, New Jersey, just across the river. My shift started at 11 am. Many of my co-workers watched the second plane hit from their window. I never made it to work, though. The roads were closed. I went to a Blood Bank to see if I could donate blood, but the line was already 40 or 50 people long, so I decided just to go to a car dealership and get some work that needed to be done on my car since I had the day off. I sat in the waiting room watching the news by myself for a long time.

A few weeks later, I remember walking in on my dad. He was crying terribly. I learned that he had just read a story in a magazine or something about a little girl who was never going to see "daddy's funny faces" again. I mentioned this as part of his story at my father's memorial service. It is the origin of the phrase "The King of Funny Faces".

Nothing is the cause of it.

   When a ripe apple falls, What makes it fall ? Is it gravity , pulling it down to earth ? A Withered stalk ? Drying The action of the sun? Increased weight ? A breath of wind ? Or the boy under the tree who wants to eat it?
Nothing is the cause of it. It is just the coming together of various Necessary Conditions for any living , organic, elemental event to take place. And the botanist who finds That the apple has fallen Because of the onset of decay in its cellular structure, and all the rest of it , will be no more right or wrong Than The boyunder the tree who says the apple fell Because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it to fall.

Leo Tolstoy . War & Peace. Chapter III, Part I, Chapter I.