There He Was Just A-walkin’ Down The Street

Not counting professionals, who is the funniest person you know?  Maybe it’s your old high school pal or frat brother or goofy class clown or your nutty cousin or the kid who sat next to you in Sunday School who could always make you crack up.  Maybe it’s that gal at your office or guy who does your hair.

For me, it would have to be Steve Gersten.  You might not know him but it doesn’t matter.  If you’re lucky, you have a Gersten in your life.

I must have been about fourteen when we met.  He was a year older than me and he was a buddies with several boys I knew.

Soon Steve and I eliminated the middlemen and became close friends ourselves.  No, that’s not accurate.  I was his best audience. Everything he did or said just killed me.

(Whenever he’d telephone, my mother would hear me screaming with laughter. “Cheer up, Ellen,” she’d always call up the stairs.)

Self-deprecating, wry, irreverent, observant and wildly mishap-prone, he was a one-man Seinfeld.  He was a teenage amalgam of Jerry, George, Kramer and Newman.  He even had music to go with his laugh track.  I have no idea how it started but “Doo Wah Diddy” by Manfred Mann became his theme song- complete with a special bouncy dance that featured rolling fist gestures.

Gersten had signature “bits.”  Like the car door gag.  With a sweeping gesture, he would gallantly open the car door for me- only to push me aside and climb in first.  This never failed to convulse me.  I know we’re not talking Woody Allen here, but it got the desired effect every time.

About that car.  Steve drove his mother’s Buick Wildcat.  His parents thought that if they bought him a car, he wouldn’t take good care of it.  They reasoned that if they let him “borrow” his mother’s car, somehow the reponsibility gene would kick in and he would be careful.

Wrong.  Now that the statute of limitations has passed, let me tell you a few things that happened in the Wildcat.

First he taught me to drive in it.

Steve’s idea of Driver’s Ed included fun pranks like yelling “Look out!” and covering my eyes when we were on Edens highway.  Or he would actually turn the car off when we were cruising on the highway.  (We spent an awful lot of time on that highway.)

He beat up the Wildcat so badly that when his mother went to trade it in, the dealer took one look and told her he could get rid of a social disease faster than he could the car.

We screamed at that.  It was so Gersten.

Funny or aggravating things followed him around.  It was part of his “George” persona.

Like the time he took me to the Old Town neighborhood in Chicago.  I wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place and I had a strict curfew to boot.  But that never stopped us.  We were illicitly wandering up Wells Street when a cop ordered the crowd to “stop congregating and keep moving.”

Steve complied instantly- by turning in circles.  Predictably, I thought the move was hilarious.  The cop…umm…not so much.  He immediately threw Steve in the back of his squad car- and handcuffed him to it for good measure.

When I peered in, I saw a rabid police dog in the front seat hysterically charging the mesh divider to get to my merry prankster. Steve was cringing and crying “Dorton!” – his patented go-to exclamation.  (I have no idea from whence it came.  It means OMG!)

I literally went down on my knees pleading with cop.  He must have relented and let Steve go because today, as I type this, I am not still grounded.

(You notice I use the word “cop” in this anecdote.  Yes, “policeman” is the politically correct term.  But, hey, man.  This was the sixties.  That’s what we called them.  And worse, I’m sorry to say.)

Then there was the infamous “Hut Two Three” episode. A troubled and trouble-making former student had joined the Marines, completed boot camp, and wanted to show off his new uniform to his old New Trier classmates.  Most of the kids were too intimidated by his rep (and his pecs) or too smart to say anything of a derogatory nature to this guy.

But not my hero.  As the Marine proudly strode the rotunda, Steve manfully stood two floors above him calling out “Hut Two Three Four! Hut Two Three Four!”  This did not go over big with our armed forces. Soon the Marine had located his heckler and was chasing him and me- innocently swept up in the mayhem- around the school.

As Muscles drew close, Steve threw me at him yelling “Take the girl! Don’t hurt me!”

I bounced off the Marine and landed on the floor.  That was okay.  I was so convulsed with laughter that I couldn’t run anymore.

Steve took me for my drivers license.  When we got to Libertyville, he told me to go inside and wait in line.  After he shut off the car, he turned on the wipers and turned up radio full-blast.  When I came out to the car with the examiner and turned on the ignition, the car exploded.  The guy flunked me right there in the parking lot.

“Who brought you?” the examiner asked angrily.  I meekly pointed to Gersten laughing in the corner.  “Okay, wiseguy,” he said. “Show me your license.”

Steve complied by pulling out a Xerox copy- his real license being held as collateral for an earlier traffic violation.  The DMV guy tore up Steve’s Xerox- and gave him another ticket.  I have no idea how we got home.

Humor is transitory.  It’s fleeting- like laughter.  I would never be able to convey why a certain phrase or a phone call was funny forty-six years after the fact.  The joke would never travel.  I can’t explain why or how Gersten was so funny.

But I got an email from Steve the other day.  I hadn’t heard from him in a long time.

And it made me laugh.

Now listen to his theme song.