Inside jokes suck balls when the other person dies.
Once, when I was 17 or 18 years old, my father and I listened to Notre Dame play Tennessee on the radio. It was one hell of a football game. The two teams seesawed back and forth until finally coming down to a last second field goal attempt by The Fighting Irish for the win. It wasnt much of a field goal; basically, an extra-point attempt, and for reasons I either never knew or have since forgotten the Notre Dame coach sent in some rookie kid named Rob Johnson to make his 1st collegiate attempt. He fucking shanked it. Notre Dame lost the game. It sucked. To my knowledge Rob Johnson never played again.
However, for the next thirty years, whenever someone would miss a kick my dad and I would look at eachother and say in unison, "Fucking Rob Johnson!" and then we'd laugh our asses off. Or whenever one of us would hear the name somewhere we would call the other and say, "Hey, guess who I just ran into? Rob Johnson!" "Tell him I said get fucked." Then we'd hang up laughing.
I was listening to the Giants play the Mets tonight when who comes to the plate but Rob fucking Johnson himself. I laughed to myself and almost reached for the telephone before realizing I had no one to call. Nobody else thinks its funny. What a fucking trip that was.
Maybe this is all part of the grief process, I don't know. Maybe one day when I hear the name Rob Johnson (and its happened enough times over the years I gotta believe its gonna happen again) it will do me some good, although I dont see how. Right now all it does is remind me that my team lost and my dad is dead.
So fuck Rob Johnson. If you see him tell him I said so.
