These are limericks written over a span of years from about 2010 to 2013 by my father. I had asked him go back to working on his memoirs, of which he'd only ever written one chapter (now lost). He agreed, though reluctantly, but when I asked him if he'd been able to make a start, he showed me a limerick, instead. It seemed the more I hoped for personal narrative, the more he answered back in limericks. They became something of a hobby. In fact, he told me, he would often wake up at 2 am with a limerick in mind, get to the computer, write it down, and then go back to bed. After a while, they were printed out in a continuously-updated, black 3-ring binder kept in the living room, from which he would regale guests with his creations, always to laughter, sometimes to blushes, and occasionally to deep mortification on the part of his family. Sometimes, requests to write verses including certain names were honored, with a special nod given to my mother, Naomi, and her penchant to shop. When I asked him to tell me a little bit about the writing process, he had this to say, "I was reminded of a game that some of my teenage cohorts would play. We would, in turns, each sing a limerick that we knew, interspersed with a chorus, and we would sometimes go at it for an hour or more, before we had exhausted our store of remembered verses." Dad has taken a lot of trouble to include italicized words in each line of most of his limericks, to make sure that people who are reading them for the first time understand the flow of how the words are to be read aloud. He also recommends reading them in small bites, not too many at once. One last important note -- Dad emphasizes that these verses are not truly reflective of his personal obsessions, and that he would not want anyone to mistake the subject matter as his autobiography. For that, I am afraid we will have to keep pestering him. We hope you enjoy reading them -- with laughter, blushes and mortification -- as much as we have enjoyed having them read to us, and at least half as much as Dad has enjoyed writing them.
