One of the advantages of gaining wisdom (it ain’t polite to say “getting old”) is that incredible earth-shaking ideas occur to a guy that make his grandchildren look at him funny.

Now this one I can’t claim any original credit for because it was thrust upon me many decades ago when I was working for a veterinarian and going to college and majoring in girls, preferably slow girls (not show girls).

It was fun working for the vet. Nice guy and great sense of humor (“Sometimes I feel like beating every (name of popular breed) with engineer’s overalls so they’ll chase trains.”) Occasionally we’d get in an animal that was beyond help and it was time to “put him to sleep.” Sounds better than … well, you know.  So when the young mother with three small children and a cardboard box walked in, all of them crying like the end of the world, we hustled to see what the problem was.

Inside the cardboard box was a still-barely-alive jackrabbit that this woman had accidently hit with her car. But the rabbit looked more like he had tried to cross the race track for the Indy 500 and no one had missed.

The doctor looked at me solemnly and said, “Slim, can you bring me about this much K.H.O. please?” I went to fill the syringe while he broke the terrible news to this family. The real name for K.H.O. was Euthasol, and was a permanent pain ender, right? But our vet referred to it as K.H.O., which was vet speak for Knock Him Off.

Life seemed so much simpler then. And we only laughed when we were alone.