Invitation to a Spaghetti Dinner

My first wife Carol had a good sense of humor, and for the most part she was able to control it when it came to practical jokes on me EXCEPT whenever she was with one particular friend, Lynne and then it seemed that I was always the target. One thing about Carol was that she wouldn’t participate as a practical jokester on anyone but me (it makes me wonder if I ever played jokes on her).

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I don’t know where Lynne got her ideas for the jokes that she and Carol played but somehow, she would come up with them and then convince my wife to join her. Most of the time I had never even done anything to Lynne, yet she considered me an easy mark. She never had trouble finding participants and I’m quite certain that my wife was her first and favorite recruit.

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Such was the case when Lynne arranged for two of our friends to invite Carol and me over to their house for a spaghetti dinner. Now why would anyone suspect a practical joke was about to happen, especially when these friends were not known as practical jokesters but as I alluded to, Lynne could convince anyone to join her. 

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I think everyone who knows me is aware of the fact that I’m not a connoisseur of mushrooms. The fact is, I can’t stand those things, and I am a firm believer that when God created the earth, he put mushrooms on it, as a joke to test how many dummies would eat them and pretend to like them. I believe that He sits back on His Heavenly couch and laughs.

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So, when I was served my meal there were three big whole mushrooms prominently sitting on top of my spaghetti. I should have suspected that something was wrong because no one else had mushrooms on their spaghetti but not wanting to create a scene, my thought was to pick them up off my plate and unobtrusively put them on Carol’s plate because she likes them. As I carefully picked up the first one, I got a surprise. Instead of a miserable mushroom I discovered that it was really a cow’s eyeball (probably preferable than the mushrooms). 

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Instead of reacting in a wild and crazy way I calmly picked one of them up and set it on Carol’s plate. While everyone was laughing at me and thinking they had played a good one on innocent me, I picked up the second mushroom I repeated the process, only this time I put it on the plate of the young daughter (8-9 years old) of the friends where we were eating. She reacted like everyone had hoped I would react. The third eyeball I decided to eat (not really but wouldn’t that have been funny?). I gave that one to Carol as well.

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After getting rid of the three eyeballs, I proceeded to eat the spaghetti that was left on my plate, and I got a little pleasure out of the reaction from everyone at the table. In a cacophony of horrified voices, they all yelled, “YUCK! Don’t eat that spaghetti. It’s contaminated,” and our host quickly picked up my plate and took it into the kitchen where she disposed of it in an appropriate way. She brought me a new plate of spaghetti to eat.

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Meanwhile, Lynne, who hadn’t been invited to the dinner but had snuck into the house, was hiding in another room excitedly waiting for my reaction to her perfectly planned joke. As I recall the evening, she didn’t get much satisfaction because the eyeballs didn’t bother me as much as she had hoped. 

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However, I must admit that this was one of the most interesting and well-timed practical jokes I have ever been involved with.

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Once more Carol’s involvement was essential because without it, it would have never worked. Such involvement between these two friends created a great deal of fun for them. These practical jokes provided them with a bonding moment and on at least on two other occasions they got me good. The first was when they hit me with a pie in the face at a restaurant and the second was getting hit in the face with a mud pie on a beautiful Saturday, summer morning. If truth be known, I enjoyed these jokes as well.

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Needless to say, that during this period of my life I had to have a sense of humor, or I couldn’t have survived my neighbor’s antics. 

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Over the course of my life my humor has gotten me into trouble, but I can honestly say that my humor has also provided me an escape and gotten me out of more trouble and awkward situations than it ever created.

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Everyone who knows me should be aware that I have Tourette syndrome (TS) and frequently when I meet parents who have children with TS, they ask me how I learned to survive. The first thing I tell them is I had good parents that loved me and accepted me for who I was. The second thing I tell them is my sense of humor. Then I ask these parents whether their children have a sense of humor and if they don’t I encourage them to help their children develop one. In all honesty I don’t know how I would have survived without humor, and I don’t know how others survive life if they don’t have humor in it.



Happy Failing Forward,


Calvert Cazier