Tim Gamble's Blog

The Afternoon Sandy's Floor Wax Broke

After nearly twenty-one years of marriage, a surprise pregnancy brings Sandy and her husband into unfamiliar territory. There will be a brilliantly cleaned kitchen floor, an unexpected trip to the hospital, and a few days that change the meaning of almost everything. The joke comes first. The rest of the story doesn't promise to cooperate.

“You never know what you can handle until God starts piling it on.”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 41

It's the sort of observation a man can deliver confidently before discovering what is about to be piled on. Sandy had long since given up expecting to become a mother. Then a visit to the doctor produces a surprise so extraordinary that her husband first mistakes her dazed expression for terrible news. For a couple accustomed to a life without children, the change is thrilling and unsettling in equal measure. An unexpected gift can arrive without instructions, and even the happiest surprise can make the future look suddenly enormous.

“Since then, I’ve always referred to the story as ‘The Afternoon Sandy’s Floor Wax Broke.’”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 44

Sandy's water breaks while she's doing the dishes. Instead of stopping, she gets down on her hands and knees and tries to clean the spreading mess. Her husband volunteers to take over, to no avail. Apparently the kitchen floor must be made presentable before anybody is allowed to become a parent. The title turns a moment of urgency into household comedy. It's also a glimpse of how the two of them operate: even when life changes abruptly, the familiar habits of being themselves don't vanish on command.

“It took us 21 years to get this far, and I don’t think we have another 21 in us. I’ll take whatever you can give us,” I said.
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 48

Jeremy is critically ill. Doctors are warning that he may not survive and that, if he does, serious complications are possible. For the new father, those predictions barely qualify as a choice. He isn't negotiating for a perfect outcome. He wants his son. A man who spent a career making decisions under pressure has suddenly encountered a problem that can't be solved by cleverness, effort, or knowing the right person to ask. All his usual tools are beside the point. The only answer he can give is to hold on.

“Jeremy was fine. Sandy was fine. I was not fine.”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 50

The medical emergency resolves with astonishing speed, and mother and son come home. But the father hasn't returned to the person he was before. Years later, he still wakes at two in the morning as though the baby monitor were on. He adds that these days he gets up for an entirely different reason, which is an admirably quick return to familiar territory. The laugh doesn't erase the fear that came before it. Sometimes everybody is safe and the event is over, yet something inside the person who watched it happen keeps listening.

A Hamburger, a Straitjacket, and a Perfectly Good Night

A hitchhiking trip with his sister, a visit to her friend in Pennsylvania, and an unsuccessful search for hamburger. What could go wrong? Quite a lot, as it happens, especially when the people who are supposed to explain who you are decide to make the situation more interesting.

“Sounds righteous, man, but that’s not our bag. The old lady has a gig in Pennsylvania we have to get to,” I said, trying to keep up with the lingo.
Now What Are We Talking About Here?, p. 42

It's August 1968, and a carload of young protesters invites the siblings to join the commotion surrounding the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The answer is delivered in borrowed hippie vocabulary, with his sister promoted to “the old lady” for the occasion. He can speak the language well enough to decline the invitation, which may be the most practical use he ever made of it. Rebellion looks quite different when somebody asks you to share the consequences. His sister's next question—how did he learn to speak hippie?—is probably fair.

“How did you get out?”
Now What Are We Talking About Here?, p. 45 — Sheldon speaking

The quest for a late-night hamburger ends with two police officers escorting him back to the institution where his sister's friend Sheldon is staying. Instead of explaining that he's a visiting relative, Sheldon looks at the handcuffed young man and asks how he escaped. And just like that, the quick-witted hitchhiker becomes a character in somebody else's joke. It's a useful reversal. He has spent years improvising his way through official misunderstandings; now an aspiring doctor improvises faster, and the people holding the keys believe him.

“Honestly, it was great. I think that’s the first time I ever had my own room.”
Now What Are We Talking About Here?, p. 47

The “room” is a padded cell, and the evening includes a restraining jacket. Sheldon and his sister arrive the following morning prepared to rescue him, only to discover that their guest has managed to get a decent night's sleep. Calling that a private room is a splendid way to reclaim the punchline, although it doesn't make the circumstances entirely innocent. Humor can restore a little dignity after other people have made decisions for you. It can also spare your rescuers the embarrassment of discovering that you aren't quite as outraged as they expected.

“My words were never weapons; they were buoys.”
Now What Are We Talking About Here?, p. 48

Looking back on encounters with officers and assorted authorities, he explains why the wisecracks arrived so readily. He wasn't trying to win a contest of insults. More often he was trying to keep everybody, himself included, from sinking into the tension of the moment. Of course, the person making the joke isn't always the best judge of how it landed. But the distinction matters: humor as a way of dominating a room is quite different from humor as a way of making the room bearable. A buoy doesn't get you out of the water. It gives you something to hold on to.

The Trouble With Yesterday

First love has a bad habit of staying seventeen even after everybody else grows up. The trouble isn't simply remembering what happened. It's discovering that an old memory can still make demands on the present.

“We each held a special place in each other’s hearts, but she eventually moved on from me and asked me to move on, too.”
Now What Are We Talking About Here?, p. 4

Lynn and the young man from Arizona had shared a closeness that felt much larger than the time they actually spent together. Then her life began moving in a direction that didn't include him. Nobody had to behave badly for this to hurt. She was entitled to her future, and he was entitled to miss the one he'd imagined. It's a particularly difficult lesson for a fellow who usually treated obstacles as invitations to get around them. Another person's decision isn't an obstacle. It's a decision.

“When you’ve been separated by time and space, the only conversations you can have are about the past—either the past which includes the two of you, or the more recent past which doesn’t.”
Now What Are We Talking About Here?, p. 13

He arrives in Colorado hoping the feelings he remembers have somehow been waiting for him. But a reunion has two histories: what the people shared, and everything each has lived since. The first can make two people feel instantly close; the second reminds them how little they actually know about each other's present. Nostalgia is excellent at preserving a feeling and remarkably unreliable at telling us what to do with it. A familiar smile doesn't necessarily mean the story has picked up where it left off.

“Lynn was my drug of choice, and I needed to kick the habit. I needed to be free again.”
Now What Are We Talking About Here?, p. 59

For a young man who spent years finding ways out of police stations and inconvenient situations, this is an unusually frank admission: he couldn't simply talk his way free of his own longing. The chapter is ostensibly about arrests, but here he recognizes another sort of custody, one maintained by hopes he keeps renewing himself. Calling the feeling a drug is hardly flattering to its owner. That's what makes the observation useful. He isn't accusing Lynn of imprisoning him. He has finally noticed who keeps closing the door.

“I thanked him for his kind words, hoping he was simply trying to make me feel good. But in the end, I was glad I got away.”
Now What Are We Talking About Here?, p. 61.

Years later, Lynn's father tells him he was the one she should have ended up with. Once upon a time, those words might have sounded like the answer to every question he had asked. Now they sound like a rather dangerous invitation to imagine a different life. People are remarkably generous with alternate endings when they don't have to live through them. The affection remains, and so does the memory. But the man listening has a marriage and a life of his own. Not every story we cherish is one we would want to begin again.

“The world isn’t coming to you.”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 373

The sentence appears at the beginning of a story about hitchhiking, when stepping onto a highway meant surrendering a fair amount of control over what happened next. It could sound like a motivational slogan, but the surrounding pages are too full of uncomfortable surprises for that. What he's really is participation: the willingness to go where something might happen, even though you can't choose what it will be. Of course, that also means accepting the possibility that the universe's idea of an interesting afternoon differs substantially from yours.

“This time I was awakened with an earth-shattering noise and rumble. I opened my eyes. There was a train flying by a few feet from my head. Needless to say, I was done sleeping for the night.”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 385

His first interruption was a furry visitor that had somehow joined him inside his sleeping bag. He relocated closer to the railroad tracks, a decision that proved less restful than anticipated. The train supplies the punchline, but it's the understatement afterward that makes it memorable. Human beings can adapt to remarkable circumstances; unfortunately, our first adaptation is not always an improvement. At least the creature and the locomotive were considerate enough to make separate appearances.

“By now, I’d learned one thing for sure: in my strange life, things don’t always work out… until they do.”
Now What Are We Talking About Here?, p. 136

On another trip, he reaches St. Louis by motorcycle with bee stings on his face, rain soaking his clothes, and a hotel room that costs more than he can pay. He retreats under the entrance canopy to consider his options. Then the night clerk comes out and offers to help him find a way to stay. The line doesn't claim that everything will magically turn out well. It acknowledges something less dependable and more human: a bad situation can change because another person decides to do something kind. Optimism is easier when somebody opens the door.

“Still, it beat walking.”
Now What Are We Talking About Here?, p. 145

After nursing a failing Honda across hundreds of miles, he finally finds the elusive replacement sprocket in Albuquerque, thanks in part to a young mechanic who even lends him a car to retrieve it. The repair works. The catch? The larger trail sprocket reduces the motorcycle's highway speed to about forty-five miles an hour. It's not exactly the triumphant conclusion the traveler had imagined, but he's moving again. Sometimes progress doesn't look like victory. Sometimes it looks like a very long ride home at forty-five miles an hour.

The Trouble With Enough

Some people spend their lives trying to have enough money. Others manage that and discover they still haven't learned how to have enough work, enough things, or enough problems to solve. Apparently the word "enough" doesn't come with an instruction manual.

“Money only matters when you spend more than you earn.”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 190

That sounds like a remarkably unromantic answer to the great mystery of wealth, especially from someone whose career involved selling furniture to people who often wanted more of it. But the point isn't that money has no value. It's that the anxiety begins when desire outruns resources. The arithmetic is simple enough to fit on a napkin; the psychology is harder. There is always something more attractive in the showroom, and the Joneses have a remarkable talent for buying it first.

“Remember that you don’t have to own the view to enjoy it.”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 190

A view is an odd possession. Put a price on the house in front of it and suddenly the scenery seems to belong to somebody. Yet the mountains remain indifferent to the deed, the mortgage, and the property taxes. The line doesn't argue against having things; the narrator knows perfectly well what it takes to earn them. It simply separates appreciation from acquisition. There's a certain freedom in enjoying something without first having to carry it home, insure it, or find a place to put it.

“It’s never really about the job; it’s about the people you encounter along the way.”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 239

After decades of stores, inventories, promotions, transfers, and the occasional spectacular management decision, the most durable part of a career turns out not to be a title. It's the people. That doesn't mean the work was unimportant; anyone who has watched him attack a failing store might dispute such a claim. But achievements eventually become figures in an old report. A person who stood beside you—or drove you crazy—can remain vivid for a lifetime. Which is inconvenient if you'd hoped to forget a few of them.

“When you’re in the business of slaying dragons for a living you soon find out there’s an unlimited amount of dragons to slay and that at some point you have to take some time off and trust that some other knight will continue the quest in your stead.”
Now What Are We Talking About Here?, p. 272

Here is the problem with becoming competent: people keep bringing you dragons. Eventually you begin to suspect that the kingdom will collapse if you put down your sword for a week. He knows the feeling. Years of solving the next problem have made stopping feel suspiciously like failing. But an endless supply of work is not evidence that one person must finish it all. Somewhere there is another knight. The difficult part may be trusting him long enough to go on vacation.

My Father Spoke in Code

There's an odd thing about growing up: you can know someone your entire life and still discover how much of him you've missed. Fathers and sons are particularly good at this. They may share a roof, a history, and a last name without ever becoming fluent in the same language.

“I never knew what my dad was thinking or feeling. It seems he was always talking in code.”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 38

His father had been a Navy radio operator and could exchange messages in Morse code with people half a world away. At Yosemite, he even used a flashlight to communicate across the valley. His son watched, fascinated, but never learned to decipher much of it. The joke has a second meaning that arrives almost unnoticed: a man could be remarkably good at communicating with strangers and remain a mystery to the boy beside him. Perhaps the hardest messages to send are the ones closest to home.

“In the end, it turns out I didn’t really have any questions, only some unresolved feelings.”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 346

Years later, a long, improbable journey takes him to New York to see his father. The anticipated confrontation never quite materializes. His father even offers to answer questions about the separation from his mother, but the son discovers that an explanation isn't necessarily what he came for. There is something quietly recognizable in that disappointment. We sometimes imagine one decisive conversation will rearrange the past. Then the conversation arrives, and the past turns out to be more stubborn than either participant.

“I would have paid twice as much just to get out of there.”
Now What Are We Talking About Here?, p. 207

A later family journey brings him to Bookbinder's, where his father and Betty relive an old romance over a steak-and-lobster dinner. Unfortunately, some of their cherished memories involve marriages that had to come apart before their romance could flourish. The son listens to stories he never wanted in such detail, while the bill grows impressively. It's a sharp little joke with an uncomfortable truth beneath it: one person's beautiful memory can be another person's wound. Even the same family history doesn't belong to everyone in the same way.

“I’ve told my son I only have two rules, forgiveness and humility.”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 145

This comes after a much less comfortable childhood memory: his father's harsh discipline, and a sister who still carries the distress of having witnessed it. The adult son remembers differently; the father, he says, later regretted the beatings. Forgiveness here isn't proof that nothing harmful happened. Nor does it require everyone to remember it alike. The humility may lie in allowing the other person's memory to remain different from your own. Considering how argumentative the boy could be, two rules is an admirably short list—though not necessarily an easy one to follow.

Rules, Report Cards, and the Art of Saying No

Some people hear an instruction and ask how soon it needs to be done. Others want to know who made the rule, whether it makes sense, and what happens if they ignore it. The second approach may be entertaining in a classroom. It becomes considerably less amusing when the stakes involve a war.

“I can safely say I disappointed absolutely everyone. Not on purpose, I just started thinking for myself.”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 138

His older brother and sister were excellent students, accomplished in precisely the ways adults liked to admire. Following them through school meant inheriting a reputation he had not earned and expectations he had little interest in satisfying. The explanation is wonderfully innocent—he simply started thinking for himself. Of course, independence and being a royal pain in the neck can look remarkably similar from the other side of the desk. It's not always easy to know which one you're practicing while you're practicing it.

“I thought you wanted me to be a team player. I’m getting mixed messages here.”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 138

An adult offers the familiar warning about following your friends off a cliff. The boy replies by pointing out how often those same adults demand teamwork. It's the kind of smart remark almost guaranteed to make the situation worse. But it's also the beginning of a habit: listening for the difference between a sensible rule and an instruction that simply expects obedience. The trick, which he hasn't entirely mastered, is knowing when the contradiction matters and when he's just enjoying the argument.

“There’s a war on and another year of high school will keep me out of the army.”
Now What Are We Talking About Here?, p. 159

A missing credit in senior English presents what the school counselor considers a catastrophe: another year of high school. The prospective graduate sees an entirely different opportunity. His student status could protect him from the draft a little longer. The school administrators, apparently unenthusiastic about keeping him for an encore, arrange a special test. It's a comic collision between two definitions of success. But beneath it is a young man calculating his future against a war that had already taken boys he knew.

“The catalyst for me was realizing that my only winning move was not to engage.”
Now What Are We Talking About Here?, p. 175

By now the wisecracks have acquired a harder edge. ROTC, the draft lottery, and a series of encounters with military authority have forced him to consider what sort of man he wants to become. He isn't claiming that all service is dishonorable or that saying no makes him a hero. He has seen the costs of war and knows he is poorly suited to becoming a soldier. The old reflex to challenge authority is still there, but the question is no longer whether he can win an argument. It's which arguments he can afford to enter at all.

A Teddy Bear Among the Millionaires

Monte Carlo has an impressive collection of things designed to make ordinary people feel underdressed: yachts, jewels, grand hotels, and dinner bills that could ruin a perfectly good appetite. Fortunately, there's always room for someone who brought a bag of balloons.

“I made my signature balloon animal—a teddy bear—and left it on the bar.”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 115

He learned balloon sculpting as a way to keep his hands occupied while quitting cigarettes. It wasn't intended as training for life among the elegant and enormously wealthy. Yet a little teddy bear left on a Monte Carlo hotel bar attracts precisely the sort of attention that jewels and expensive automobiles are supposed to command. There's something delightful about arriving in a place where everyone is displaying what they own and discovering that what you can do with your hands is much more interesting.

“I must have ordered the wrong thing again.”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 120

After an evening when the balloon animals practically take over a restaurant, the grateful owner arranges an unexpected form of entertainment for the table: two beautifully dressed ladies who turn out to be professionals. Sandy is watching, another guest looks bewildered, and the narrator manages a polite retreat. His explanation refers back to the difficulty of ordering from French menus. Humor becomes a graceful emergency exit. He can acknowledge the absurdity without making a spectacle of anyone else—or volunteering to stay for the encore.

“It’s not what you think. It’s like a group of sea lions out there, six to sixty. It’s not titillating at all. It’s the cure for it.”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 121

On an excursion to Nice, the group discovers that the beach is clothing-optional. Curiosity sends him down to investigate while the others wait for a report. It's not exactly a flattering zoological comparison, but the larger joke lands on the expectations of the spectators. Imagining something exotic is easy. Encountering actual human beings, of every age and description, has a habit of defeating the fantasy. Glamour is sometimes what you see before you get close enough to look.

“Did you hear that? Was that the sound of your balloon popping?”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 128 — Sandy speaking

Sandy has noticed that their French tour guide seems particularly interested in her husband. He insists the woman is simply being French, which is a useful explanation right up until the evidence starts behaving otherwise. Then Sandy delivers this tiny masterpiece of marital punctuation. It's funny because she doesn't need a lecture, an argument, or even a full sentence about what she's been noticing. After years together, one person can locate the other's inflated self-importance with remarkable accuracy—and pop it in a single breath.

The Last Time You Played With That Toy

Some things disappear with a crash. Others simply slip out of our lives without bothering to say goodbye. A childhood toy, an art project, a little extra room on somebody's lap—each has a way of explaining change without sounding like a lecture about change.

“The last time you played with that toy, did you know then you would never play with it again?”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 32

He begins a management seminar by asking adults to remember their favorite childhood toys. Faces light up. Then comes this question, and the smiles change. Nobody remembers putting a beloved toy down for the final time. There was no ceremony, no warning, no little sign announcing the end of an era. Much of life changes in exactly that fashion, while we're busy doing something else. We recognize the last time only after it has become a memory.

“With me, it was easy — one child, one lap.”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 17

His father once explained that with five children and only one lap, somebody was bound to be disappointed. The boy who could entertain himself was something of a logistical blessing. Years later, while reading Harold and the Purple Crayon with his own young son, the arithmetic has improved dramatically. It's a small, funny line with a tender difference underneath: what was once a competition for attention has become an abundance of it. Sometimes life gives us a second look at the simplest things.

“I learned that I should use a lot less wire and only try to capture the essence of the movement and leave the rest to the imagination of the beholder.”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 354

At eleven, he tries to make a baseball player out of wire and produces something closer to a tangled argument with a coat hanger. His second attempt—a man walking—uses less wire and wins a ribbon at the Heard Museum children's art fair. The discovery isn't that he has suddenly become a genius. It's that the viewer doesn't need every detail supplied. Leave a little space, and another person's imagination enters the picture. There's a surprisingly generous idea hiding in that untidy first sculpture.

“More often than not, when I’m ‘in the zone,’ the final results have no resemblance to the original idea. You trust yourself and go where your instincts take you.”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 355

By the time he's studying art seriously, the boy who couldn't get his baseball player to look like a baseball player has learned to welcome surprises. The work begins with an intention, but he doesn't insist that the finished piece obey it. That's different from working without a plan; it takes attention to know when the plan is getting in the way. Perhaps that's why an old story can mean something different when we tell it years later. The events haven't changed. The person arranging the wire has.

Things Worth Keeping (Including Thirty-Year-Old Mincemeat)

Not everything we keep belongs in a scrapbook. Sometimes it’s a jar nobody wants to open, a childhood that refuses to grow older in its mother’s stories, or a small gift given just when words have become difficult. The interesting part is why certain things stay with us.

“Everything would get used up during the year except for the jars of mincemeat.”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 12

His mother learned thrift during years when nothing could be wasted. She gardened, canned, preserved, and carried those habits from New York to Arizona. She also carried the mincemeat. Decades later, nobody was entirely sure what was inside the jars, and nobody seemed eager to find out. The family eventually gave the remaining supply a respectful burial. There’s a gentle contradiction here: the very habits that help people survive difficult times can outlive the difficulties themselves. Sometimes we keep a thing long after we’ve forgotten whether we need it.

“My mother never told a story about us kids that included anything we’d done past the age of eight or so. Those must have been very happy times for her.”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 14

Children have the irritating habit of growing up into people their parents can no longer direct. But memory allows a mother to keep an earlier edition close at hand: five youngsters discovering the world while the story still seems manageable. The line is affectionate, but there’s a small mystery inside it. Perhaps those were her happiest years. Perhaps they were simply the years she could revisit without having to account for all that came afterward. Parents and children may remember the same life while inhabiting rather different versions of it.

“‘In case you get hungry,’ was all she said.”
Now What Are We Talking About Here?, p. 128

A young traveler is leaving after a painful misunderstanding with a family that had taken him in. The mother has already apologized, but as he fastens his saddlebags, she appears with a little jar of boned chicken. Not an elaborate speech. Not a formal reconciliation. Just something to eat later. The gift is funny in its plainness and moving for exactly the same reason. When people have been frightened or embarrassed, kindness sometimes finds a safer language in practical things. It’s a surprisingly large apology to fit into a small jar.

“I can’t help but think back on the kindnesses that were shown to me by people who had nothing to gain by helping me. They just did it out of the kindness of their hearts.”
Funny You Should Ask … Tim Gamble, p. 347

There are plenty of tales here about doing things his own way, usually with an astonishing degree of confidence. But the longer he looks back, the more crowded that portrait of independence becomes. Someone offered a ride. Someone else offered shelter, a warning, a meal, or an unexpected chance to get home. None of these people was obliged to help. Gratitude complicates the appealing notion that any of us gets through life entirely on our own. The kindness is rarely ceremonial. Sometimes it comes with a handshake. Sometimes it comes in a jar.