Hoss, Meet Ernie.

Today my day started out learning that Hoss is gone.

And here is the background to that sentence.

When I first started my trek onto the Internet, I mainly belonged to one yahoo group, a group of women doing Body for Life, as I was. This was around 2003/04. I made a few friends on there, including Skwigg, who is a very funny lady indeed.

She was a reader of Dooce.com, and I instantly became hooked, the comments on Dooce's blog were about as funny as you were going to get.

That is where I 'met' the usual gang of idiots...most of the blogs I started to read. This was a large number back then, as they all sort of 'knew' one another and would comment on each other's blog as well as Dooce's...and I mean to tell you, those comments were laugh-out-loud, I have to tell my husband about that one funny. Of course, it was never as funny retelling them as it was reading them.

I knew all of these people, but did not know a one of them.

Of all the blogs, I started reading Susie's regularly the quickest, mostly because, as most of you know, Susie is fabulous in every way but loose. I adore her. She was the one who introduced me to Hoss.

I cannot tell you what post it was that led me to Hoss, but I remember the first thing thinking, "This cannot possibly truly be a 75-year-old man. He has the wit and charm of a frat boy. I'm sure this is some funny young kid pretending to be living in an old folk's home as a lark". Hoss was SO funny, I for some reason or other thought he could only be a young cad being facetious.

I was partly wrong.

From then on, I lamented about all the blogs I read and how I probably would never have any readers, and Hoss decided to become my Army of One. He lived up to that, and I always knew I would have a funny comment from Hoss waiting for me after every post.

He and I became fast blog friends, emailing each other about this or that, but mostly just stupid jokes we'd heard that day.

I could only imaging explaining to my mother how my buddy was a 75-year-old man I'd never met, and how she would probably never understand that. LP, however, did, thankfully, and was never threatened in the least at my adoration for him. Nor was he perplexed when I received an Oregon Ducks sweatshirt as the one above from Hoss in the mail.

I only wish I could have met Gene in person to tell him how he truly has touched my heart. From reading other comments about him, I am one of many. He taught me to never take yourself seriously, and to always be young at heart.

His obituary, written by him, ends: "He will be cremated and immediately he will be reincarnated." I'm sure as a dung beetle, as he would want it.

Love ya, Hoss.