You can tell me. I'm a doctor. Thanks for the....

memories, Leslie. You were on of the funniest people we have ever had the pleasure of watching. The skilled deadpan lines you uttered in Airplane have a special place in my heart. Let me tell you why.

My youngest son Zachary(who has a blog here) was only 3 months old when he contracted a very bad case of Chicken pox. That weakened his immune system which enabled him to contract R.S.V. a nasty little respiratory disease which stops your ability to breathe. It is very similar to asthma in adults. In children it is much more dangerous. Especially if they can't tell you what's wrong. There was more than one occasion where we raced to the ER to get him breathing again. Those big brown eyes would show the confusion he had when he started to go Smurf on me. Breathing treatments every two hours on the hour for months on end. There were nights when I did not think he would ever be healthy enough to breathe on his own.

Zachary has always been a fighter and even at that young age he was tough. As he grew older we would watch movies when it was treatment time. (Or bedtime) And his first favorite movie was Airplane. I know he didn't get many of the jokes but I think he loved to lay on my chest and hear me laugh. The more I laughed, the more he laughed. The more he laughed, the harder I would laugh. It was the most beautiful treadmill you would ever witness. It didn't take long for Christopher, his older brother, to hear the noise and want to be a part of it. So every night I was home (and there was not nearly enough of them) we would put in a movie and laugh until they fell asleep. And Airplane was the movie that Zachary chose for a long time.

Now the boys are 11 and 14. The days of laying on Dad and watching a movie are gone. We still watch movies but it's not the same for me. For me, the movie is unfolding right before me. How will the boys turn out? Will they go on to great things? Will they be happy? This is the part of the movie that you watch covering one eye. It can get kind of scary. At some point you want to yell,"Don't go in the basement" or "Don't start drinking this young" but you know they can't hear you. They are going to do what is written in the script. They will play the part just as it is written. So now, while I think of the great Leslie Nielsen, I smile and think of my two boys. And the voice in my head says' " Of course we'll do good Dad. But don't call us Shirley."



Till next......