Kickass laughing with Frank Ryan

Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper tried to call his old friend Frank Ryan yesterday to chastise him for not responding to previous contact attempts.  The phone message the keeper left was sarcastic and wise-guy, typical of the life-long banter between him and Ryan.

It was the keeper’s thinking that Ryan’s lack of response must be because he was visiting a friend in Arizona, and a likely Ryan comeback would be asking the keeper to stop bothering him as Ryan relaxed in the warm sunshine.

Then this morning, word came that Ryan had died as a result of heart issues.

Rather than simply deleting his phone message to Frank, the keeper plans to edit it to read something like: “Frank, this is not a funny thing that you did.  You made me laugh thousands of times over the years but this is not another one of those times.  You and I had in common a history of risky excess, but this time you have gone too far. I will not be retaliating by ending our friendship, but I do insist that you respond in some fashion from your current status, whether or not you have telephone access.  World conditions presently call for tears, and I do not want to go there, Frank, so make me laugh, maybe by helping me recall that long-ago time at the Congress Bar when you and Jim Selk and I………”

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