Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and you
cry alone.
I don’t believe it. I know plenty of caring people who are quick to help people who are feeling down. I also know people who dismiss people who laugh a lot as being completely brainless.
And even when people do laugh that doesn’t mean they will laugh with you. As gaelikaa points out in her recent post on humor, people don’t always laugh at the same things. I’ve been lucky that way. I can still remember silly incidents from when I was a kid that my mother and I laughed about for years.
I also remember an incident that happened when my husband and I were first married. We were on a trip to England and the highlight was being able to see Hamlet played at Stratford-upon-Avon. I had loved Hamlet when I studied it in high school and couldn’t believe my luck…until I saw the performance. The acting was so poor it was funny, especially the gal who played Ophelia. A robot could have delivered her lines more convincingly.
Then when Ophelia was saying “Oh woe is me” a loud snicker rang through the room. I was thrilled…there was a kindred spirit who felt the way I did. Yeah, sure. Everyone in the room started staring at me… I had done the snickering. That made it even funnier. It was all I could do to wait until intermission to laugh. Andy shared it with me, then I went back to the hotel while he stayed for the rest of the performance. It was a family joke for years that I had to leave in disgrace. Even now if I start to feel sorry for myself it lifts my spirits to think of that wooden voice saying, “Oh woe is me.”
Many of the things that tickle our funny bone don’t make good stories. We often say, “You have to have been there.” I think it’s more than that. You also have to have seen the incident with the same quirky sense of humor. Humor is tricky because it’s so personal.
What about you? What makes you laugh? Do you still remember funny incidents years later?
This cartoon reminds me of the bumper sticker, “Beam me up, Scotty. There’s no intelligent life down here.”
If you were an intelligent life form somewhere else in the universe would you try to contact us? I’m not sure I would. As I’ve said before, I think we’re all a bunch of nuts.
That doesn’t mean we’re not lovable nuts, of course. That’s been a liberating concept for me, that we don’t have to be perfect. It’s okay to make mistakes, to make fools of ourselves, to keep trying things.
Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
I’m sure I have a noble mind
And honesty and tact,
And no one’s more surprised than I
To see the way I act!
That’s been a great comfort to me when I’ve made a fool of myself one more time.
The other day I came across another poem that’s a bit longer, but it brings back the feeling of embarrassment and regret when I’ve blown it again. Sometimes all you can do is laugh.
The Cookie Thief
by Valerie Cox
A woman was waiting at an airport one night,
With several long hours before her flight.
She hunted for a book in the airport shops.
Bought a bag of cookies and found a place to drop.
She was engrossed in her book but happened to see,
That the man sitting beside her, as bold as could be.
Grabbed a cookie or two from the bag in between,
Which she tried to ignore to avoid a scene.
So she munched the cookies and watched the clock,
As the gutsy cookie thief diminished her stock.
She was getting more irritated as the minutes ticked by,
Thinking, “If I wasn’t so nice, I would blacken his eye.”
With each cookie she took, he took one too,
When only one was left, she wondered what he would do.
With a smile on his face, and a nervous laugh,
He took the last cookie and broke it in half.
He offered her half, as he ate the other,
She snatched it from him and thought… oooh, brother.
This guy has some nerve and he’s also rude,
Why he didn’t even show any gratitude!
She had never known when she had been so galled,
And sighed with relief when her flight was called.
She gathered her belongings and headed to the gate,
Refusing to look back at the thieving ingrate.
She boarded the plane, and sank in her seat,
Then she sought her book, which was almost complete.
As she reached in her baggage, she gasped with surprise,
There was her bag of cookies, in front of her eyes.
If mine are here, she moaned in despair,
The others were his, and he tried to share.
Too late to apologize, she realized with grief,
That she was the rude one, the ingrate, the thief.
Sometimes I wish I were more perfect, but then I think, “Don’t be so arrogant, Jean, Old Gal. We’re all a bunch of nuts. Why should you be any different?”
This cartoon reminds me of my dad. He used to say, “Never let people know how much you can do, otherwise they’ll expect you to do it.” He wasn’t a great achiever, of course, but his strategy worked well for him.
Have you ever pretended to be less competent than you really are? (I have.) If so, what did you do with the time that you saved?
Have you ever pretended to be more competent than you were at the time? (“Fake it ’til you make it”…I have.) How did that work out?
Years ago when I was coming back from the laundry room a boy was walking on the sidewalk ahead of me. He was waving his arms and wiggling his body as he walked, clearly just enjoying the sensation of moving. I was tickled by the scene and was glad that he hadn’t yet been taught that wasn’t “appropriate” behavior. I, of course, had been socialized so I waited until I reached the privacy of my apartment to mimic him.
It was great fun…it got my blood circulating and lifted my spirits. We adults were clearly missing something. So for quite a while I integrated some waving and wiggling into my everyday life. Gradually I got caught up in other things and forgot to do it…until this week when bikehikebabe sent me this video:
I’m now back to waving and wiggling and, thanks to the baby, I also shake my legs. Immature? Possibly. If so, then maturity is highly overrated.
I drew this cartoon a few years ago when I was having a series of health problems. It helped a lot to laugh.
I remembered it now because it’s finally time to trade in our 1988 Jeep Cherokee. We’ve had two large repair bills, plus a long towing, in the past few months. So we’re concerned about its reliability up in the mountains this winter. As you can see, we keep things as long as possible.
I’m glad my husband feels this way. I would hate it if he decided to trade me in for a newer model.
What about you? Do you go for the “new and improved” models, or do you try to keep things going as long as possible?
My daughter gets up at 5:30 on workdays to walk Sammy and Banshee. Her husband walks them again in the evening and they pay someone to take them out in the middle of the day. Then there are the costs of veterinarians, dog care if they go on a trip without their four-legged family members, their new car, etc.
Are Sammy and Banshee worth it? How could you doubt it? Still, there are moments…
As I’ve mentioned before the four of them drive from the Chicago area to Ann Arbor, Michigan every time there’s a home football game at the University of Michigan. Torben’s family lives in Ann Arbor and they’re all football fans. So a couple of weeks ago they left at 4:30 in the morning to get there in plenty of time for the game. Needless to say they were exhausted that night and went to bed early. Then around 3:45 a.m. Sammy gently woke Kaitlin up by touching her face with his nose. When she woke up enough to figure out where she was, Banshee started vomiting. Presumably Sammy was trying to tell Kaitlin his sister was sick.
So Kaitlin and Torben went into action. He took the dogs outside, in case Banshee had to vomit more, while Kaitlin started cleaning up the mess. Unfortunately in the confusion they forgot to check the yard for skunks. Sammy tangled with one last year so they usually try to be careful it doesn’t happen again. Sure enough, there was a skunk, Sammy chased it, and he got sprayed once again. (He’s a sweet dog but not a fast learner.)
Torben grabbed him by the collar and rushed him into the bathroom so Sammy couldn’t contaminate any porous, nonwashable surface, and Torben and Kaitlin scrubbed Sammy good with their deskunking cleaner…which they were careful to have on hand. It took a while but they eventually could go back to bed and get a bit more sleep.
They woke up to a horrible stench, of course, made worse by the fact that Sammy had been like Duncan in the cartoon above. He had crawled onto the bed between them. That is never allowed, but presumably he needed some reassuring closeness after his ordeal. They were not pleased. Even if the dogs were allowed on the bed, that was not the time. Sometimes you don’t want them to snuggle.
But dogs aren’t the only animals born to snuggle. bikehikebabe sent me these pictures from the internet:
Photocredit uknown.
Photocredit uknown.
Photocredit uknown.
The comment with the pictures was
For Sale: One Useless Cat
That was a joke of course, but useless? I think not, and I’ll bet many of the millions of pet owners in the world would agree with me. I personally love to snuggle and think this cat would bring joy to the family lucky enough to have it. What do you think? Have you ever had a pet that has brought joy to your life?
Not only have Grannymar and bikehikebabe had some parts replaced…a new hip for Grannymar and a hip and shoulders for bikehikebabe… but Grannymar can share her recovery with us via YouTube.
Modern technology can be wonderful, but as Grannymar’s blog and video show, it can’t replace gumption and a sense of humor. Thanks, Grannymar. You made my day.
How did it get to be fall already? Do you ever feel like the dog in the cartoon? It reminds me of one of my favorite jokes: Inside every old person is a young one asking, “What in the heck happened?”
What about the following cartoons, do they resonate with you?
They represent how I often felt when I was younger, but now I try to be like the little boy in this picture. He’s completely immersed in what he’s doing and is oblivious to time. He’s completely present in the moment. That’s where I try to be as much as possible.
What about you? How do you feel about time?
As usual this post is presented as food for thought.
In a comment to last week’s post Rummuser said he thought the U.S. and Indian governments have been destroyed by capitalism. Here is my view:
I don’t agree with Rummuser. In the nominally communistic (“from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”) Soviet Union the high party officials were living it up while the common people were suffering. And in China there have been plenty of documented stories about local officials stealing from the people in their districts, with no recourse for the victims. Good government is hard to come by…it’s an age-old problem, a problem a lot older than the idea of capitalism.
The above cartoon reminds me of a story a school-teacher friend told me years ago. There wasn’t much money for raises so the teachers were asked if they wanted percentage raises, which benefit the more senior teachers the most, or equal raises for everyone. Even though she would have gotten more with a percentage wage, she voted for equal amounts to everyone. She wanted to be fair to the new teachers. It turns out her fellow teachers voted the same way.
The administrators had no problem with that. They simply gave themselves raises based on the percentage of their salaries and divided the rest of the money equally among the teachers. The public school system is not a capitalistic one, but that doesn’t mean the administrators didn’t look after their own interests.
Life isn’t always fair. People aren’t always fair. For me it helps to have a sense of humor.
