Time To Laugh
What Time? Which Place?
I’ve been told to stop laughing my whole life. Apparently, this is not the time for humor. When is the time for humor? I don’t know. I’ve been told it’s not now and to stop laughing.
Take, for instance, the man who nearly lost his life by suffocation in a bizarre manure spreading accident that buried him in the freshest product. The person who was telling me about this tragedy was very annoyed at my inability to keep a straight face. There was nothing funny about clawing your way out of manure to get a fresh breath of air and then gagging when the air that you go was anything but fresh. Nothing funny at all. Terrible accidents are not funny, even with poop.
That’s an extreme example, of course, but I think people find what they’re looking for. One person can be disgusted by a landfill while another is admiring the flowers that have managed to grow there. It’s all perspective.
Sometimes I can’t help but laugh, especially as one horrible thing after another is happening, as if it was carefully choreographed and rehearsed for weeks.
Say that I find out something needs to be done in the next twenty minutes, like deposit physical money into the bank that takes eighteen minutes to drive to before it closes, and everything goes wrong while trying to accomplish that task. I can’t find my left shoe, or my housekey, hit every red light, forget my phone, almost run out of gas along the way, get a stomach cramp while running into the building that perfectly mimics a fatal medicals situation, and realize that I had several more hours than I thought because there is an ATM that doesn’t end the business day until eight o’clock.
I have to laugh at that. How stupid. Panic makes us stupid. It’s very funny.
But not everyone sees it that way. Let’s say that your significant other is with you during this grand bank run. He or she may have the opposite reaction at the end of it and feel like laughter is the last thing that should be coming out of your mouth. So you might try not to laugh. Don’t do that. It becomes much more funny. Trying not to laugh is the equivalent of using nitrous oxide in a racing car.
But it’s so much fun. I’ve come to the conclusion, through a lifetime of exhausted indifference towards those who are annoyed by laughter, that it’s ok to laugh when you want. It’s cleansing, it’s healthy, and you’ll most likely outlive the people who want to designate a time and a place for laughter. Just try to keep a straight face through their funeral.
I’ve collected a random batch of comics for this week. Randomly picking out comics from my archives, I’ve discovered, is not the same thing as shuffling a deck of cards. My brain is involved in the randomness and it’s messing things up. So I may be gravitating, allegedly at random, towards the ones that I like more than others.
This is a very old one that was made as the strip was transitioning from its former setting, which was basically nothing, to that of a big box store. I have to say that I’m pretty good at retracing my steps and finding something that was placed in a particular bag in a weird location. I have to be careful when retracing my steps, though, or I’ll fall into a well of regretful missteps.
People love to point out that this is a nice thousand dollar a year raise and I like to point out that a thousand pre-tax dollars divided by fifty-two paychecks is $19.23. That might not be enough to buy something that was ten bucks a couple of years ago and now costs $21.95.
After a few grueling years of working her way up the ladder, Penny finally becomes manager of the store. Beware of employers who treat their employees like family.
This was me as a part-time employee. It was like watching a soap opera. I’d be gone a couple of days and I would have to binge the gossip to catch up.
I had to show Berle frozen in the meat locker. Somehow he survives this. Berle should be studied in the name of science.
I really like the dialog here. Sometimes I feel like a new reader when reading older strips, because I have no memory of it. The employees who have emergencies that are consistently of their own making are especially fun employees to work with. By fun, I mean horrible.
I don’t want to brag, but this comic has the Mom Seal of Approval. I remade this from a comic that made my mother really laugh many years ago.
This is me. If someone has made me dinner, I don’t care what it is. Am I eating blowfish for the first time in my life? Great. Making someone dinner is love in its purest form.
This is one from the middle of a storyline years ago and is special to me because everything in this strip is true. Ms. Tautgore is the reason I ran screaming from that job, quite literally. Screaming is the opposite of laughter, so it’s very important to laugh as soon as your are able to do so. It’s the only antidote.
My father and I finished replacing the roof on his house a couple years ago. My brother and I had started the project the year before, and were obliged to stop when it became too cold for the materials we were using to set up correctly. One afternoon, my father and I came in for a watermelon break. He said, "Isn't this great watermelon?" I replied, "I found out that Cal had cancer over watermelon. Thanks for reminding me, you monster!" Cal, my brother, wheeled his chair out of his bedroom and sat down, laughing the whole time. Eventually, my father stopped looking abashed and joined in.
When my brother was first diagnosed, they said it was stage four, but was so widespread they had no idea what type it was. On his first PET scan, he was lit up like a Christmas tree. Three lesions in his brain, at the top of the tree. Two fractured vertebrae, on a spine/tree trunk that remained upright until he was literally too weak to hold himself up any longer. Tumors in clusters through his lungs, liver, adrenal glands and abdomen, growing more numerous the further down you looked at the scan. He couldn't complete the roofing job because his fractured vertebrae put him at risk of paralysis if he lifted more than ten pounds. The biopsy said it was melanoma. There wasn't much that could be done.
On a particular Monday, my brother exchanged jokes with the mechanic who repaired his car. On Friday, he was gone. He maintained his sense of humor until the end.
Laugh at yourself. Laugh with others. Do not laugh at others. Unless the others are management, customers or employees in retail. Retail might the secret Tenth Circle of Hell. What have we done to deserve it?
Dr. Sydney Freedman on M*A*S*H one time described Hawkeye as “anger turned sideways”. Years later, someone used that phrase to describe comedy. Both are true, which is why laughing is the only way to respond to some things.