Let Me Phil You In
My colleague recently concluded a discussion by saying “I am happy to fill anyone in, pun intended.” His name is Phil. I laughed SO hard. Someone else referenced the joke as a great dad joke. If you are an adult who laughs extremely hard at “dad jokes”, that means you have a childlike sense of wonder, which you should be ever so grateful to possess.
My Dad’s name is Phil. I use the present tense because his name doesn’t change now that he’s dead. He may not be here, but his name is still Phil. Well, after I heard this “Phil you in” joke, I wanted to reach out to my Dad to ask him if he had ever utilized this play on words. I never heard him say it but that doesn’t mean he didn’t say it at work. I could ask his colleagues but I would rather just ask him.
Do you ever watch a crime drama where they are hunting down a very dangerous suspect and the Chief of Police says “take him alive!” They need the person alive because they have QUESTIONS! They want the answers before they left this suspect perish. I didn’t think I would have a lot of questions for my Dad because he recorded his every move in the Hoffman Family Calendar. He created a searchable encyclopedia of the details of our lives. The calendar holds information of what we did on certain dates. But I doubt it says “Phil makes joke about philling people in.”
It’s not that I need to know if he ever made that joke. It’s that I’m sad that I’ve the lost ability to pick up my phone, call his office, and just ask him. His response would be one of two things: yes I made the joke because DUH Kerry - it is so obvious OR wow I’ll make the joke today Kerry!”
If you have living parents, I’m not advising that you bombard them with daily questions of their every move so that you still feel whole when they die. What I would advise is to maybe swap “where do you want to go for dinner next week” to “what did you eat as a kid Mom?” You’ll be grateful to have that information in decades to come.
The more you know about your loved ones when you are both alive, the more you can find them everywhere they go when they die.
