The Heebie-Jeebies

THE HEEBY-JEEBIES

Dad's coming. He wants to celebrate his two-hundredth birthday here. I am about one hundred- seventy-eight myself. Heck, I was I here for so long my hair’s turned white.
I was about three years old when I was diagnosed with what my Dad called ‘the Heebie-Jeebies ’.
They didn’t know what it was back in 1846. They just waited to see what happened to my dad, then they told me that would happen to me.
And I remember, all those doctors and all the nurses in that hospital were dead before they could see what happened to my father. Dad was one-hundred years old on 1911. By then my mom had died of old age, and my brother was the only family member besides Dad that was still alive.
He got pneumonia and died in 1920, right after WWI ended. I went to my dad and asked why I had lived so long (I was eighty in 1922) he said, “You got the Heebie- Jeebies.”
That was all that he said.
I got married in 1892 and had three kids, but then my wife died in a car wreck and the kids were taken away by her mother.
I could have sworn one asked me, “Daddy, what’s wrong with me?”
So I went to a couple of bars after that, and I got drunk. Then I slipped on a knife that went and killed someone.
I was not sent to jail, even though one person said that I picked up the knife and threw it at the man that was killed. I went to confront him, but he had already moved across the country with his kids when I got to his house.
I turned one-hundred in 1942, and it seems like nothing got better. I visited my dad, and he said to me, “Son, you tired of the Heebie-Jeebies yet?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Then I got something to tell you. I am one-hundred-thirty-one years old, and I want to end this life. But I can’t die.”
“Why?”
“Heck, you know why, son! We both got the Heebie Jeebies!”
That was the last I’ve seen of him yet.
Now it’s 2011 and I am one-hundred-seventy-eight. I hate living so long.
Dad got out of the jailhouse today, and he was glad of it. We met each other at my house for his two-hundredth birthday.
After about an hour of talking, we heard a knock.
“Who could that be?” I asked, and got up to open the door.
A man of about one-hundred-ten was there.
“Who are you?” I asked him.
“I’m your son. I got the Heebie-Jeebies.”
Oh, crud.