#9: Laughter

There’s nothing like the laughter of a child.

I was skyping with one of my nieces, and for some reason she just got tickled with my saying, “Night, night!” to get her to pretend-sleep. And she’d crack up and roll around in her blanket and then get up. And we’d repeat the ritual, “Night, night!” “Heeheeheehee!!!”

Children’s laughter is so free of any artifice. It bubbles up and shakes their whole body. It’s contagious. It’s pure. What happens when we get older?

I love being with people who make me laugh. Laughter and vulnerability go hand in hand. Making someone laugh, you have to crack jokes, be silly, and open yourself up to uncertainty, “Will they laugh or not?” And when laughing, you open yourself up both physically and emotionally.

What an energizing feeling to laugh full from the belly! Laughing so hard your abs hurt and your cheeks are stretched beyond their capacity. Tears roll down your face, and you can barely breathe. Laughing in the company of another person causes an unending feedback cycle where you laugh and they laugh harder making you laugh even harder and on and on until you can’t remember what you were laughing about in the first place!

I laugh at a good joke.

At the great lines in Modern Family, especially those lines by Phil and Cameron.

At my nieces and nephew saying and doing funny and cute things.

At talking stuffed animals.

When being silly with loved ones.

What makes you laugh?

Funny Photo Tidbits

These were some photos of some funny signs that I saw on my road trip across the U.S. We don't have so many of these funny signs in the Northeast, I don't think.

Such a funny one. Aren't boats usually named a woman's name or something nice? We were cracking up when we saw this one.

This one just got me chuckling because it was so vehement. This was in Missouri. It amazes me how many people really seem to dislike, no, even hate, President Obama! But then I wasn't exactly fond of his predecessor...

I really liked this one. The sign in front of this one says, Slow Down, and then you come upon this one that is really insistent. This was at a rest stop in upstate New York.

Loved this one the best. You see these all along the highway in New Mexico. The UFOs are painted on. So someone(s) went through and painted these on all the cow crossing signs. My mom asked someone who said it's because cows have been allegedly abducted by aliens. So driver, beware!

Such creativity in these signs. So do sign makers think about bringing a smile to drivers' faces when they make their signs? Wouldn't driving be more enjoyable if you had these unpredictable jabs of humor sprinkled along the long stretch of highway? Kind of like the unexpectedly chipper subway driver who makes jokes and issues cheery greetings on a particularly gloomy Monday commute. Or the airplane pilot who cracks jokes as part of his standard greeting before the plane takes off. Or the three year old reciting knock knock jokes to an attentive audience of adults who crack up uncontrollably, much to the child's delight. All things that have brought a smile to my face and even giggles and chuckles when least expected this past year.

What brings us those unexpected smiles and chuckles?

 

Posted with Blogsy

#28: The Case of the Missing Watermelon

This is probably going to end up being one of those “You had to be there” stories, but I’m going to blog about it if only  to remind myself in the future of this funny incident.

Yesterday, I brought a lot of bags of food for a party we had today for our graduating seniors.  In the midst of the bags, I had a watermelon that I brought as dessert for the party.  I took the bags and watermelon up the elevator to our building’s kitchen, and that’s the last I remember of the watermelon. I put the bags of food and groceries away in our building refrigerator and went to my office to work a long busy day.

This was in the morning, when I came to work.  At the end of the day, I had a sudden realization that I didn’t remember putting the watermelon anywhere– fridge, office area, anywhere.  So I retraced my steps and looked for the watermelon and couldn’t find it.

Without thinking too much, I sent an email out to the whole agency (about 100 people in total) that read:

Hi everyone,

I’m so sorry to clog up emails, but I was hoping to get some help finding a missing watermelon!  I brought it into the building this morning and then had it in the elevator up to the 4^th floor and then after that, I think I lost it… has anyone seen it?  If so, please return it to the 3^rd floor. 

Sorry to take your time!! (can’t believe I lost a watermelon!!!)

As soon as I wrote the email, I thought, “People are going to think this is a joke!  It sounds ridiculous!”

And then I got emails and responses starting that night into the next day of people dying laughing, cracking jokes like “Maybe the Gingerbread man ran away with it.”  It was hilarious.

So I found out that our maintenance guy found it in the kitchen the day before and stored it away for another party later this week because he didn’t know whose it was!  He thought it was a watermelon left by others for that party.  I tracked him down, and he returned the watermelon and we got to eat it for our party tonight.  After recovering the watermelon, I wrote this email back out to the whole agency:

The case of the missing watermelon has been solved.  Thanks to N__ for rescuing the abandoned watermelon.

And this is my last silly email of the day.  🙂

Thanks for all your well wishes in the meantime.  It meant a lot to know so many people cared about our poor missing watermelon.

We’ll enjoy it tonight at our party for seniors!

And here’s the wayward watermelon:

This fiasco was quite funny and lots of people said it made their day with a good laugh.  But it made me think about my post the other day about slowing down.  What if that watermelon had been something more valuable?  My rushing through things, trying to multitask was going to get me into trouble soon.  This was definitely a case of trying to rush through and do too many things at once.  A funny story for now, but how quickly that could change…