"Allen Tibbetts, You're an Idiot"

The title of this piece are the words I heard frequently from Russell, one of my all-time favorite radio partners.

We hated each other.

Russell was - make that, is - a big boy with a personality to match. We were brothers. And we battled like brothers when the microphones went ‘hot.’

If I could have worked my entire career with him, I would have.

He’d bring these silly, joyful stories to the show, and I’d sit across the desk poking holes in them. On the occasion I could actually get under his skin, he’d erupt into a frustrated outburst that would often, quite literally, bring me to tears laughing.

Ultimately, he left our morning show in search of a bigger paycheck, but we’re still in touch occasionally, usually when something truly stupid happens in our lives - the type of things we could hardly wait to share with our listeners the next morning.

Now that you know him, let me ask him to leave the room for a moment. He’ll be back.

Allow me to invite my wife to this party in present tense.

She and I have been working several days in a row on rebuilding and staining a deck, spending more time in close proximity in the daylight hours than usual.

She has noticed a ‘spot’ on the top of my ear, and it has kept her attention. She is especially not fond of its irregular shape and looks at it almost every night, insisting that I call the dermatologist ASAP.

I agree to that. For 30 years I’ve been playing golf with a bunch of old men, many who had little places on their ears removed for suspicion of being possibly cancerous or pre-cancerous.

Am I the next old man that didn’t take enough care to protect his ears from over-exposure to the sun?

And… I hate to bring this up, but when you’ve gone three rounds with three different cancers… hey, my Bingo card is getting pretty full. I’m not anxious to add skin cancer.

It takes 5 days to get back home and see my doctor. In the waiting room, she stares at ‘spot’ a few seconds. A few l-o-o-ng seconds. I’m a little anxious.

She speaks.

“Have you been painting or staining anything?”

My head drops + my shoulders drop = posture of guilt and shame.

The doctor - and her assistant! - are not trying to hide their amusement. They are LOL-ing all over the place.

Doctor humor sets in. She grabs a cotton ball, applies rubbing alcohol, wipes the spot off my ear and puts it in a biohazard bag and hands it to me for a keepsake.

Melanoma Carncinoma got no home in Arizona (hey, it rhymes). It’s also an exact match of our deck stain. Weird, huh?

Leaving the waiting room, other staffers are laughing. They’ve overhead and know I’ve just been diagnosed with not cleaning my ears.

Full disclosure: My mom accused me of that all the time when I was a wee lad.

Let’s bring Russell back. In our radio days together, this is exactly the sort of thing we would have been itching to tell, then blow each other up over. He must hear this story.

He answers the phone with clairvoyance. “Allen Tibbetts, you’re an idiot.”

“How’d you know?” (A completely unnecessary question. It’s why we call each other these days.)

When the laughter subsides and we’re wrapping up, he can’t help but drop one more on me.

“So it wasn’t melanoma, it was mahogany!”

Me hate him lots.