Longtime Lee’s Summit coach brought humor, wisdom to students and his beloved family

I wake up every day happy to be a married man, for a slew of reasons that range from the mundane to the sublime.

Up high on my list of marriage benefits is never again having the dawning realization that I’ve been seeing someone long enough that a “meet the parents” moment is inevitable. Those meetings could go all kinds of wrong ways.

At the beginning of one date, I stepped through a front door and straight into the glare of around a half-dozen scowling men with crossed arms — the girl’s dad alongside guys he might have hired for the afternoon from a temp agency for biker bar bouncers — all of them very curious about my plans for that evening.

Another time, I pulled up to a new girlfriend’s house and found her dad and his buddy drinking in the driveway like absurdist trolls on a bridge, determined not to let me pass until they’d administered a pop quiz on the finer points of car repair.

Both encounters ended with the dad I’d just met laughing at me as I drove off with his daughter, which didn’t do much to endear any of us to each other.

The final time I met a girlfriend’s parents for the first time, it was also an introduction to a dad who would come to laugh at me plenty. But Ron Downs knew that timing is the key to comedy.

First you have to make your daughter’s guy feel genuinely at home with your family. Only then do you have free rein to laugh at his screw-ups and awkwardness with no hard feelings.

And that man sure knew how to make a guy feel at home. I never got an uncomfortable grilling about what exactly my intentions were when his daughter brought me over for family dinners, only a huge smile and a booming welcome.

He didn’t start giving me a hard time until he saw I was good and comfortable at his home in Independence. Once he started, though, it was always open season.

The only time I noticed him sparing my feelings was, strangely enough, the evening I came over to tell him and his wife exactly what my intentions were with their daughter, and to ask for their blessing to ask her to marry me. I could see that he knew exactly why I’d come over, and also that it was taking all his effort to hide his laughter behind his hand while I fumbled over what I’d planned to say.

It was the last time he took it easy on me.

Some time later, I found out I’d embarrassed myself on live TV when I didn’t realize a news camera had zoomed in on me on a public street for no reason that I could see, right at the moment I’d decided to take care of an itch.

I didn’t get any sympathy from Ron, just a loud, “I heard you were on TV!” accompanied by a wide grin and a big laugh the next time I visited the family.

I felt terrible about the situation until he showed me how funny it was.

Ron died last month, a week after he got a friendly laugh at a few loved ones by watching us struggle with puzzle boxes that he’d locked our Christmas presents into.

I got an expected final needling from him at the reception after his memorial service.

A couple of years ago, I’d mentioned to Ron that I embarrassed myself while trying to get used to a new backpack before a big hike by walking around town with the pack full of weight.

It was a screw-up I’d forgotten about until one of Ron’s nephews told me that my father-in-law loved to laugh about the time on one of those walks when I stopped for a breather outside my neighborhood grocery store, leaned back a little too far and toppled over from the weight, my hands and feet waving in the air like I was a helpless turtle, right at the store entrance.

It was shameful when it happened, but the way Ron had told his nephew about it turned my clumsiness into pure comedy.

Ron was a longtime coach at Lee’s Summit High School and on other teams in Eastern Jackson County who taught a generation of kids about football, baseball and basketball.

A lot of his players came to his memorial service with stories about lasting lessons that went far beyond the field or court: “Don’t practice until you get it right; practice until you can’t get it wrong.” “You can’t stay up with the owls if you want to fly with the eagles.”

Today I’m thinking about one of the lessons he taught me: Sure, time will turn embarrassment into comedy if you wait long enough, but you can speed things up by taking your tale of woe to a good friend who’ll laugh at you until you start laughing at yourself.

Richard Espinoza is a former editor of the Johnson County Neighborhood News. You can reach him at respinozakc@yahoo.com. And follow him on Twitter at @respinozakc.