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Laugh It Off

Let’s have some fun. It’s overdue.

Life’s been getting a little tight; it’s much too serious lately. With more deadlines, too many meetings (all of them too long!), not enough relaxation, more e-mails than I can handle, and the feeling that I gotta do more to keep all those weak marriages together, it’s enough to make a grown man sigh. Or curl up in the fetal position and whimper. Or (perish the thought!) work more hours. A guy considers a lot of dumb solutions when the pressure mounts.

His own esteem fights for air too. Sometimes, I feel about as competent and coordinated in this position as a violinist wearing boxing gloves. And so, instead of blaming others or feeling sorry for myself, I’m gonna laugh for a while. If you don’t feel like laughing with me, fold this baby up into your own specially designed airplane and sail it into your favorite recycle bin without a second thought. Far be it from me to force you to smile if you don’t feel like it.

It seems appropriate that we laugh at the stuff that drives us nuts instead of letting it sting our ulcers or irritate our hemorrhoids. Here are just a few humorous realities:

• A day without a crisis is a total loss.
• The other checkout line always moves faster.
• Leak-proof seals—will. Self-starters—will not. Interchangeable parts—won’t. Fail-safe solutions—aren’t.
• Inside every large problem is a series of small problems struggling to get out.
• Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.
• Not until you stand up in front of a group will you realize your fly is unzipped.
• Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
• The repairman will never have seen a model quite like yours before.
• Any tool dropped while repairing a car will roll underneath to the exact center.
• No matter how long or hard you shop for an item, after you’ve bought it, it will be on sale cheaper somewhere else.
• There’s never enough time to do it right, but there’s always time to do it over.
• Ninety percent of everything is crud.
• Once you open a can of worms, you are never able to re-can them.
• A Smith & Wesson beats four aces.
• You will remember you forgot to put the trash out front when the garbage truck is two doors away and you’re in the shower.
• The chance of the bread falling with the peanut butter and jelly side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
• Not until you finish walking to work will you discover that the bottom of the back of your dress is stuck in the top of your pantyhose.
• Everyone has a scheme for getting rich that will not work.
• If you try to please everybody, nobody will like it.
• The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlamp of an oncoming train.
• Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone.
• When a broken appliance is demonstrated for the repairman, it will work perfectly.
• No good deed goes unpunished.
• Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
• If you fiddle with anything long enough, you will break it.
• Celibacy is not hereditary.
• Not until you get home from the party will you realize you have a string of spinach between your front teeth.
• There’s a committee meeting somewhere right now planning your future, and you were not invited.
• No one’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.
• You’re well into the midlife crisis when you wake up in the morning and discover your waterbed broke . . . then you realize you don’t have a waterbed.

There are hundreds more, but that’s enough for now. I feel better already. Don’t sweat the small stuff—in fact, the big stuff isn’t worth the sweat either.

Reminds me of the lady who wrote me and told me she had decided laughter was the best medicine she’d ever taken in her life. She said it had helped her raise her twelve kids, all of whom had been born to her since she was 32. She said she met and married her husband at 31, and she had never even worried about finding a husband. Here’s how she handled that. She got a pair of men’s pants and hung them over the foot of her bed and knelt down and prayed:

Father in heaven, hear my prayer,
And grant it if you can;
I’ve hung a pair of trousers here
Please fill them with a man!

It worked. Laughter does too.