Happy Birthday, Ed

February 18th is a day of the year that brings several things to mind for me. It is Brian’s Dad’s birthday. It is my dear, sweet cousin Jennifer’s birthday. It is the day my maternal grandma passed away in 2006. I struggled with what to dedicate this blog today. In the end, I decided on Brian’s Pop’s B-Day.

64 years ago today, L. Edward O’Neill, aka Ed, Eddio, Pop, Irish, Poppo, Grandpa, Dad, was born into the world. Ed is a man that is never at a loss for words. Ed is a cover-to-cover newspaper reader. Ed is a news, weather and sports addict. Ed is a talk radio junkie. His brain is full of more news, current events, and trivial knowledge than most game show question writers. (Weak analogy, I know. I stumped myself) We lovingly refer to Ed as ‘the prefacer.’ Sometimes Ed is not so eloquent with sentence transitions. Sometimes Ed starts out sentences with phrases like this…

“Angie, not that you read the paper, and not that you CARE about this, but did you hear…”

And from there, my attention is supposed to be grabbed, peaked and I am somehow supposed to stay tuned for the rest of the conversation about which he just prefaced I will probably NOT CARE.

Or he will begin a request from Brian with something like this…

“Biner, if you think you can get a “get out of jail card” from Angie for long enough, I thought maybe you could…”

Ed gets lost at the grocery store, gas station, waiting room, checkout line, on the way to the bathroom at a restaurant, etc., because he will strike up a conversation with any willing party whenever he can. He knows no stranger.

Ed striking up conversation with Parliament security in London

Ed has a way of talking like he is in a business meeting, using office jargon and corporate tie-ins for his conversations.

And these are the things about Ed that we love and at which we crack up. His words. His conversations. His meetings of new people. His sentence transitions. His prefacing. His catch phrases. Here are a few phrases that we associate with Ed:

"Fair enough." (there is no statement more ED than this)
"i.e." (he says this out loud)
"I had to come over to your house to enjoy (insert whatever martyr choice of the day) because I’m not allowed at home… "
"In terms of this and that and the other… "
"And so on and so forth… "
"Etcetera" (he says this out loud in conversations, too)"
"What have you… "
"When you get to be my age, you’ll find… "
"If you will..."

And our favorite… (sometimes he throws into the middle of his conversation when speaking about someone being stumped or at a loss for words):

"PPPBBLLTT! "

Ed shows us even those never short of words somehow find a raspberry the best means for getting across a point. Surprisingly, it is very effective when used by Ed, too.

Ed striking up conversation with a member of Parliament as he was trying to leave the building in London

We love you, Ed (Poppo)! Happy Birthday!

Brian, Angie, Gavin and Grant

KEEP BELIEVING