Son Nick was a joker. It might have been in his DNA, but after school one day it was no joking matter. That’s when he rushed into the newspaper office all excited. “I’ve got to get a jock’s strap for football,” he said. “Where do I get one?”

Yes, jock’s strap.

He was 13.

It was his first real sports experience other than T-ball so I tried to explain what to call it before I sent him to LaPorte Pharmacy.

Five minutes later he was back: “What size do I wear?”

That was 1978. We still lived in Edmond so surely I told him to ask his father when we got home that night.

A few years later Nick’s football career was cut short by an injury that put him on crutches. The cast covered his foot except for his toes, went up over his knee, but soon he did acrobatics on the crutches.

That Christmas we shopped in Oklahoma City and in spite of his crutch agility, he opted to stay in the car at a second stop.

When Bill and I got in the car after the last trip, I apologized to the baby boy: “I tried to buy you some left-footed socks but they were out,” I said. “They had plenty for the right foot though. Too bad you need it for the left.”

It took him a few minutes before I heard: “Oh, Mom!” but there was a hint in his voice that questioned if there are really left and right-footed socks.

Then there was the time when I called home on a Saturday to say I was going to

be late. Nicky was five and we lived in Oklahoma City. He answered the phone.

I pretended to be a radio disc jockey and told him he could win $50 if he could answer one little question: “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?”

I could hear him ask step-sister Tracy who reluctantly gave him the answer.

“Grant is right, Nicky!”

He yelled, “I won! I won!”

“Nicky,” I said. “It’s your mother! It’s your mother!”

After a minute, or two, he said, “But Mom, do I still get the money?”

Now you know it was definitely in Nick’s DNA to play jokes on family, friends and coworkers. He also loved to yell “Boo!” and scare everyone, and strangely enough after his teens he never wore socks again. Not even with his cowboy boots.