She writes:
"I was sitting on the couch reading the newspaper when I heard him stick his plastic keys into the doorknob and try to open the door. Then I heard him say, 'Oh, shit.' My whole face widened, like the guy in Edward Munch's Scream. After a moment I got up and opened the front door.
'Honey,' I said, 'what'd you just say?'
'I said, 'Oh, shit,' ' he said.
'But, honey, that's a naughty word. Both of us have absolutely got to stop using it. Okay?'
He hung his head for a moment, nodded, and said, 'Okay, Mom.' Then he leaned forward and said confidentially, 'But I'll tell you why I said 'shit.' ' I said Okay, and he said, 'Because of the fucking keys!'"
The scene immediately brought to mind the time when, four years Sam's senior, I tried to get a laugh from my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother-- on Easter Sunday. The previous afternoon, I had heard a joke on the radio and I didn't understand it. But the joke absolutely killed and it was, at least I thought at the time, about flowers and, because of the season, topical. Before dinner, as my grandmother and great-grandmother rearranged the centerpiece and stemware from the dinning room table to make room for my mother's ham, I let it fly.
"What's better than roses on your piano," I asked, perfectly setting them up for the punch line: "Tulips on your organ."
Silence.
My mother turned crimson. Nanny, taken aback, tried to guide my great-grandmother away before the joke could register with her. To her credit, though, grandma, who must have been 82 or 83 at the time, broke out into hysterics, which made Nanny start to laugh, which, of course, caused my mother to lose it.
For the better part of 10 minutes, the three of them, the living entirety of my maternal line, stood above me, howling with delight.
