My family has always had a warped sense of humour. I often think my father married my mother only because she was not only so easily trollable, she'd put up with his jokes no matter how often she was the butt of them. She even mentioned it when she read her eulogy for my father.

On their first joint flight on an Eastern Airlines-flown Lockheed Constellation, my mother was nervous. My father told her to relax. If she was feeling cramped she could open a window. And there was the observation deck upstairs. She fell for both.

I inherited my father's humour, no doubt enhanced by his subjugating me to countless lame jokes which got better (or worse) as the years wore on.

They received payment in kind.

It was the holiday season and my brother an I having spent every fucking quarter we could get our hands on in the arcade playing pinball and video games, needed a gift of some sort or another. Thus was born the Mongrel Theatre.

Our parents had always referred to us as their "mongrels" so it was fitting. They were only joking sometimes.

I wish I could say what the first Mongrel Theatre was. All I know is that it was a recurring theme for around twenty years and continued even after my father died.

So what was Mongrel Theatre? Basic rhyme (with tangents), bad jokes, in-jokes, and above all, topical. I would write it, my brother would join in and occasionally my sister, too. And I usually wrote it with minutes to go before showtime.

My parents never knew when they'd be hit with a performance of the Mongrel Theatre. They could almost expect it sometime around the end of December but it could also perform on Mother's Day, Veteran's Day, even a day which wasn't a holiday but I was so inclined.

Mongrel Theatre was there for important anniversaries. Of course there were tangible gifts, but they were much less expensive than would otherwise be expected. Once puberty was history cost, wasn't the driving factor, but those little items along with Mongrel Theatre were much more important and meaningful to all of us. It showed my parents we cared.

Of course they knew I wrote and orchestrated everything. I had to give my brother stage commands during performances in out living room. But my brother played along and we're hardly the closest of kin. The thought really did count.

And then I found a couple Mongrel Theatre papers today. They'd touched Mum so deeply she'd rescued the scripts or cover pages from the trash that I'd relinquish them to. The first thing I found was a December script and I immediately remembered the entire performance, along with who was there and even the reactioins. That wasn't the one (of the ones) I'd written in iambic pentameter, but it was one of the more touching ones. I'd just decided to go back to Uni, my brother had also agreed to go back and my sister had just turned 18.

Then there was the cover page for a performance that doesn't even live on in memory. No trace of the content of the performance exists and neither I nor bro remember. But the Playbill read thusly:

Playbill

Mongrel Theatre

    presents:

The Meeting

                    A play in one act*

                            If you can call it acting

Read what the critics say:

"You have to see it to believe it! I did and I don't!"
--Gene Shallit, NBC

"Loved it! Brilliant! Spectacular! A Must-See!"
--Jeffrey Lyons, ABC

"Is there anything Lyons doesn't like?"
--Gene Siskell, Chicago Sun-Times

So there you have it. Bad humour, lame jokes, crap wordplay. Maybe one day I might write about the Cushmaker, my father's first dinner with my mother's parents. It beggars belief that my mother was allowed to continue seeing him. And yet, here I am.

Yep, here I am, sorting through so many personal and private papers, seeing love notes my parents passed or wrote to each other during both their courtship and the times my father was away. Stumbling across their first checkbook, finding picture of the first apartment with a Marantz knock-off stereo shortly before mum knew I was on the way.

It's not fair. If I ever have kids I can't bring grandparents to the table, and my parents loved how their parents were with their grandchildren, not to mention how loving they were as grandparents themselves. For my brother'skid, not mine.

I expected the same treatment for my kid(s) from my parents. And now they're gone, and my kid(s) will never have a chance to see how wonderful their grandparents were.

Life's not fair; everyone knows that. But to lose both parents before you can make a few grandchildren for them to even meet is some serious cruelty.