My dad loved "47"...

I don't know about you, but our family always seemed to have inside jokes, gags, expressions, sayings that ran continuously and seemed to work in every case. We often listened to comedy records, Smothers Brothers and Bill Cosby, among others, and would recite memorized lines to one another. Mostly, these were used spontaneously and uniquely. Over time they would be subtly modified or altered to suit someone or some situation, but a few never changed. 

One of those that has never changed for my family is the number 47. My dad coined it and would use it as follows, among other ways:  

• I have 47 chores to do today.
• There are always 47 things they want from you on these forms. 
• You kids seem to have 47 excuses for everything. 
• etc. 

We all picked this up from him: me, my sisters and my mom. Forty-seven became part of the fabric of our collective sense of humor. It would come out at the oddest times and regardless of how pissed off someone was or how intense the occasion happened to be; it still does even with him and my mom both gone. A 47-reference never failed to garner at least a smile and usually resulted in a full-on laugh. We probably now have amassed many times more than 47 different ways of using 47. 

Well, this latest case of Mitt Romney's Olympic-class dick-stepping just had to involve 47% of Americans who Mitt managed to make angry. It had to. It couldn't have been an even 48%. It had to be 47%. 

Perfect. The mystical recurring number again appears. 

This would have my dad smiling and chuckling. Even though this gaffe might have put him off doing so, he probably would have voted for Mitt, but either way, he would have liked to know that his favorite number, our family's favorite number, was at the heart of this foolishness. 

I will have to hear this news story another 47 times before my own smile diminishes even 1/47th. Thank you for this, Harry, 47 x 47 times.