My Friend Chuckles

When I was in high school, my math teacher said something like "figure this out" but, for some strange reason, I though he said "big fat jerk." Since I felt pretty comfortable in his class (we called him 'coach' since he sponsored the Math Team), I blurted out "Did you just call me a Big Fat Jerk?" He paused - looked confused and then started to laugh. The rest of the year he would affectionately call me "BFJ".

Years later in college, some of us were trading misunderstood lyrics in the dorm and all agreed our favorite was Jimi Hendrix's "Excuse me while I kiss this guy."

Last year in school I was telling a story about Ton-Ton Roger ("My French Uncle") to one of my classes. Perhaps it was the one where he had turned his car window washers out 90 degrees in order to spray pedestrians on the sidewalk (he had replaced the window washer fluid with plain water). Or maybe it was the one where I was trying to hide the fact that I had been dangling a winery employee by the feet into a fermenting vat of red wine to retrieve my glasses. Or maybe it was the one about the rat in the Chardonnay. Who knows... the point is, at the end of my story, one kid turns to another and says "Who's his friend 'Chuckles'?