| A Word Edgewise
by Mary Joe Clendenin |
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Have a Laugh Along With Your Other Vitamins
Have you had your funny bone tickled this morning? As necessary and beneficial as vitamins are good chuckles, nice snickers, a few giggles, a belly laugh, a joyful exclamation, a hearty snort, a boisterous bellow, or gleeful explosion--however one might describe your laugh. A sense of humor and the ability to laugh should be treasured along with healthy hearts and lungs.
Laughing is wonderfully relaxing. It's almost impossible to laugh and retain anger against someone. Besides all that, laughter is healing. Norman Cousins, among others, testified that when he had a hopeless, painful disease for which doctors could find no cure, he laughed himself back to health. With such aids as "Three Stooges" and "Smile, You're on Candid Camera" movies, he found that each laugh gave him ease from pain for an increasing period of time. He finally recovered, much to the amazement of all involved.
C. W. Metcalf and Roma Felible in LIGHTEN UP, said, "Humor can help you thrive in change, remain creative under pressure, work more effectively, play more enthusiastically, and stay healthier in the process." But humor does not always come naturally or automatically. It is much like a skill that you have to learn. We have to practice seeing the humor in impossible and uncomfortable situations.
Unfortunately, the work ethic which we were taught as children gets in the way of fun. You know, "Come on now, get serious. There is a time for work and a time for play." Too often we worked until we had no time for play. It's much more reasonable to find a little fun in the work. Take M*A*S*H, for example. In circumstances as serious as heart beats, characters, especially Hawkeye, are right in the middle of merriment. In fact, the premise seems to be that the only way to maintain sanity is to have some fun, keep a sense of humor, laugh at human frailty, while saving lives in the midst of killing fields is the units whole purpose.
Many times humor can defuse an explosive situation. I learned in teaching that a bit of humor could smooth ruffled feathers and calm taut nerves.
Humor comes in many guises. A Spoonerism is when beginning sounds are exchanged. For example, our daughter calls her brother "bugly other", instead of "ugly brother". Admittedly, neither is very complimentary, but endearing. Grand Old Opera used to feature "Fractured Fables", which were Spoonerisms.
Malaprops are statements where the wrong word is used, such as, "My affluence over my niece is very small." Sometimes you see real blunders of this kind in newspaper headlines.
Most everyone sees and enjoys Ace Reid's western cartoons. One cowboy said to another, "If I could sell my experiences fer what they cost me, I'd own this ranch!" Cowboy humor has a special place in laughing matters. During a dry year one wise one said, "There isn't enough moisture on this whole ranch to rust a tenpenny nail."
Then there was the cowboy who went to the doctor with a complaint. He said, "A horse stepped on my hat." He paused, then added, "My head was in it."
Then there are the misplaced modifiers, or dangling participles: "He threw the cows over the fence some hay." And my favorite, "Loosely wrapped in an old newspaper, she carried some bones to her dog."
Laughing at yourself is the best medicine of all. Some times it takes a while to see the humor in a situation where you've failed to display even a smidgen of common sense, but usually, with a little effort you begin to see the humor of the incident. When I went to Lubbock from El Paso by way of Oklahoma City is a story too long for this article, and it was a long time before I could tell it. It was so embarrassing--only to me--others in the know rolled with laughter.
One of the best ways to make friends is to share a laugh. In fact, sharing a moment of glee makes friends buddies. It takes away the awkwardness.
Being able to laugh sometimes makes fear manageable. One thirteen-year-old girl, wise beyond her years, was going to be operated for tumor. She taped a note to her tummy for the doctor, "While you're taking out my tumor, please remove the mole on my nose. I'm going to be a movie star, and that thing just has to go. See you soon."
You see, if a thirteen-year-old can find humor in a tumor operation, surely we can find things to laugh about. I challenge you to start looking. It might help to make notes as you go through your day, then as you get ready for bed you can check your list and go to sleep in a good humor; instead of watching the news as a last act and go to bed with gloom hovering over you. Remember,
"Laugh and the world laughs with you,
Weep and you weep alone,
For the sad old Earth,
Has need of your mirth,
It has grief enough of its own."