Great lines I wish I had said

There are lines others have invented I would like to claim as mine. When I have reprised one liners they have never been as good. Maybe if I repeat them often enough, people will think I said them first.

I could quote my dad until the cows come home. A neighbor came to our door in Des Plaines, Ill., when I was about 17, and asked Dad to give money for cancer. "No," he said, "there is too much of it already." The woman turned white wondering whether he was crazy or terminally stupid. He wrote a check which apparently made things OK. I reprised his line after a 50-year wait. Someone solicited money for AIDS - same white face, same check as penance. Delivering that line was worth 25 bucks. Thanks, Dad!

My mother, a creature of habit, took housework seriously. Every night she set the breakfast table and washed the dinner dishes - we had an automatic dishwasher but it was like new from disuse 10 years after purchase. One morning she got up before her usual 5 a.m. and Dad asked why. She had neglected to do the dishes and set the table the night before; he replied, "Good. The neighbors have been leaving notes on my car." OK, enough ink for dad, a very funny man. It was catching. A telephone solicitor reached mom and promised a free ham for the purchase of two cemetery lots. Mom replied, "Oh, I get it. My meat for yours." No more calls from that solicitor. Only a female senior citizen could get away with that one. I am not about to try.

Judy, mother of Fred and Jennifer, got a call from a photographer offering a 20 percent discount if she could answer one question: "What book has sold more copies than any other in the West?" Judy sarcastically replied, "The Catholic Prayer Book" to which the solicitor said, "Close enough!" Judy said, "Not for me," and slammed down the phone, off that company's call list forever. I guess Judy was not interested in the discount. The correct answer: the Bible, of course, which Judy knew.

One from me. When I was with The Festival at Sandpoint, telephone credit card orders were pretty new; my secretary, a delightful woman named Nelda Carr who had been a high school principal in Colorado for 25 years, was taking information. Her side went something like, "Name... card number... Master Card or Visa... your expiration date," at which I whispered, "No man knoweth." She began to laugh uncontrollably; when she explained to the customer he broke up, too. They terminated the conversation and continued five minutes later.

I have not retained much of a competitive drive but for years I jokingly complained that my neighbor was beating me to the curb with his garbage only because he was cheating - by taking it out the night before Phil Damiano's Coeur d'Alene Garbage truck arrived. One time, though, Will beat me fair and square; his garbage was not there when I went to fetch my Coeur d'Alene Press but was when I went curbside with our own can. Hearing my newest complaint, Kathryn said, "You must remember he is a younger man," a line that is now part of our permanent family lore.

Kathryn keeps a list posted of items forbidden to animals - grapes, raisins, chocolate, Macadamia nuts and more. Fred and his family had been visiting and after they left I glanced at the list and found scrawled in pencil, "meth." Thanks, Fred, we never would have known.

Tim Hunt, the son of a linotype operator, is a retired college professor and nonprofit administrator who lives in Hayden with his wife and three cats. He can be reached at linotype.hunt785@gmail.com.