What Makes You Laugh?

Today I need to write my blog. I have had a crazy and busy week. I was out of town all of last week, and I am working on a training presentation that I will do in Wisconsin next month. Saturday my husband broke his toe—not just any break—he slammed his foot into the coffee table, and his little toe was no longer facing north, but facing east! Ouch! Yeah, he had to see an orthopedic doctor to get a special insert in his shoe to keep his foot flat when walking, and at least 6-8 weeks of not taking our 3 mile daily walk. A friend of mine died rather unexpectedly Monday, and Tuesday out-of-town visitors came to visit. It’s Wednesday, and I publish on Thursday. What am I going to write? I googled, “I need a topic to write about.” I clicked on a link that said, “Writing Topics | Thoughtful Learning K-12.” Yes, that’s what I need. What would kids write about? I’m picking my “kids” topic, and writing an “adult” answer! This link is loaded with topics that I could write about. Who thought it may move me off dead center? I have picked the topic, “What Makes Me Laugh.” By the way, this website stated this topic is for Grades 1-3. That even made me laugh—I am such a child when it comes to humor!

With such a trying week, I need something that will make me smile. I will miss my friend who passed away. We weren’t best friends, he was from my high school class (see my class reunion blog), and it has been 51 years since we graduated, but he became a friend over the last 12 years as we both worked on reunion committees together, and shared life with our former classmates.

Sometimes laughter is the best medicine. I won’t tell you every thing that makes me laugh because you might call the men in white coats to take me away. I have a weird sense of humor. One of the things I love about my sweet husband of four years (see blog about him) is that we laugh a lot, and we laugh at stupid stuff. Here are a few examples of what has caught me funny. Laugh along, and think of the things that make you laugh, and enjoy some humor and lightheartedness that you may need when times are tough.

Story #1: Cheesy Poofs
One of the first vacations I have taken with my husband took us from Missouri through the southern U.S. all the way to Los Angeles for my son’s wedding, then up to San Francisco, through Utah and Wyoming, coming east on a northern route back to Missouri. We were driving through Wyoming, not where Jackson Hole and all those beautiful magnificent sites of the mountains and Yellowstone are located. We were driving through the southern part of Wyoming where everything looks the same, and there are very few exits with anything of interest. We are heading east, expecting to arrive in Sheridan, Wyoming by dinner time. That would be our evening stop for dinner and the night before moving on to our next day on the road. It was getting near lunch time and we saw nothing—no towns big enough to have any kind of restaurant. We got to an exit, and got off. Time for a bathroom break and maybe something to eat. We arrived at a service station/diner. I wish I had taken a photo of this place. It looked like an abandoned building, but it was not. I was kind of creepy looking, like you would see in the middle of nowhere in some movie where some nefarious incident is likely to happen.

I told Dennis that I am not eating at that diner. We can buy a prepackaged snack in their convenience store to hold us over until we get to Sheridan where we can have a good dinner and a place to sleep. I wandered throughout the store, and finally selected a bag of Cheetos and a Diet Coke. When we got back in the car, my cell phone rang, and I proceeded to answer the phone. I was chatting with one of my sons as Dennis is back driving down the highway. After a lengthy call, I hung up and commented that we should be getting closer to Sheridan, and Dennis commented that he hasn’t seen any signs lately stating the distance to Sheridan. I pulled out my iPad, and went to the Maps app. The blue dot that shows my location on the map is moving to the left. It should be moving to right if I am going west to east. So what did I do? I turned my iPad upside down! Of course, the map turns itself around, and once again my blue dot is going from right to left. I declared that we are driving west instead of east. Everything looks pretty much the same on that highway—of course it does—we saw it all from the other window before we made the rest stop!

Dennis found the next exit and turned the car around so that my blue dot was now going from the left to the right. After driving east for about 45 minutes, it is time for a bathroom break again (old people!!), and Dennis pulled off at the next exit. We saw a service station, and it sure looked like the same one we were at before, but surely it couldn’t be—had we gone that far out of our way that we were back where we started? I suggested that it was a chain of service stations, and Dennis reminded me that no one on this planet would make a chain of these abandoned looking service stations in the middle of nowhere. As we pulled in, I commented that if the signs on the garage building next door was an advertisement for something I no longer remember, we were back where we started. Sure enough, we were back there! Dennis got out of the car and went inside. When he was finished and came outside, he discovered that I was sitting in the driver’s seat, which I promptly told him to get in the other side because I was taking over the driving. He got in the passenger side, I started the car, looked over at him and we burst out laughing. We laughed so hard, we could hardly breathe! It was probably five minutes before I was no longer laughing so hard that I could pull the car out and drive to Sheridan. To say the least, we got into Sheridan after dinner time.

That’s not the end. We were finishing our trip home the next day. We left Kansas City and were driving east. We needed gas. Dennis got off the highway and drove to a service station on the north side of the interstate. I was a little hungry. I pulled out the bag of Cheetos I had bought the day before, and started nibbling. Dennis filled the car with gas, pulled out of the gas station and proceeded onto Interstate 70 going west! I immediately pointed out the error, and of course, we could not turn around until we reached the next exit. We both stared at the bag of Cheetos. I exclaimed, “Never again will I buy Cheesy Poofs! Every time I eat them, we get lost!” Four years later, when we are in a grocery store and we see a bag of Cheetos, we still burst out into laughter, and we have NEVER bought a bag of Cheetos since!

Story #2 – Driving past Auxvasse, MO
When you drive from St. Louis to Fulton, where we live, the exit one takes is Hwy 54, which takes you to Fulton, MO, Mexico, MO, and Auxvasse, MO. For the longest time I did not know how to pronounce that name. (The correct pronunciation is “Of Oz” with more of an ahh sound on the word “of”. So I called it “Ox-a-vaussie,” and everytime I said it, I thought of “Auct-a-mahee” and then either Dennis or I would say, “Wear the fox hat,” and we would burst out laughing. I will not tell you why. You have to watch this video and you will know! For me, I had to see it three times before I caught the joke. Why does it strike me funny?  I think words can be funny, and misinterpretation of words can be really funny.

Speaking of funny videos that make me roll in the aisle no matter how often I watch them are the Trunk Monkey videos. Have you ever seen a Truck Monkey video? Trunk Monkey was a series of advertisements done by Suburban Auto Group in Sandy, Oregon over a decade ago. They are amazingly funny. I don’t know if it sold many cars, but the commercials sure entertained me. You can go to You Tube to watch all of them, but I am going to share my three favorites. Hope you enjoy them!

This is only the tip of the iceberg of what tickles my funny bone. I hope you had a smile as you read about my silly life. I hope that if you are having a tough week, these few things will make you smile, even if just for a minute. Remember, life is not always tough. There are some funny moments. It’s okay to get a good belly laugh once in a while, or a lot. Do it as often as you can.