Gentle Humor

My brother and I went to the same college, and on trips home we’d entertain ourselves by making up stupid riddles. We thought they were exceptionally clever, but whenever someone else was with us in the car, they’d say, “That was really stupid.”  My brother would respond by passing gas, which both of us were genetically able to do on demand when the occasion called for it.

Here’s an example of one of our riddles. John: “Where does a bat get energized?”  Me: “In a bat tree.” Get it – bat tree…battery?  Really funny stuff.

The trip was 500 miles, so when we’d exhausted every riddle we could come up with, which was usually about three, we’d start making up poems.  One of us would say a line, and the other had to respond with a rhyme and so on and so on.  So I’d say, “The sky is blue,” and he’s say, “And so are you,” and I’d say, “I need to go to the loo,” and he’d say, “I won’t stop, boo-hoo,” and I’d say, “I’m going to smack you,” and he’d say, “I’ll fart if you do.”

Except that he didn’t say fart, which is such a crude word especially since we’d have to be saying it all the time. We invented the word “farnix” because, for one thing, it sounds funnier. To see what I mean substitute farnix in the above poem.  Plus it was something we could say in public. “Who farnixed in here? I’m suffocating!”

We were teenagers and bodily functions were hilarious. They still are, but when you cross over into being a grown up, it’s considered crude, not funny. Can you imagine a Board Room full of suits and someone cuts loose like a Whoopee Cushion?  People would have to sit there stoically and pretend that nothing happened, even when their eyes began to water.

So to end this missive I think it’s fitting to have another riddle, but I didn’t make this up, my daughter showed it to me. Try this on your friends or do it in a mirror – it’s a physical joke. You say, “Knock knock,” and they say, “Who’s there?” and you say, “Interrupting starfish,” and they say, “Interrupting….” And you immediately put your outstretched hand in their face. Try it, right now, you don’t even need a mirror just do it to your own face, really, it’s funny. It’s not stupid, trust me!

It’s hard to come up with a clever title. I always admire those newspaper headlines that seem to hit the nail squarely on the head. Like this one: “Body Cavity Search Reveals $4,000 in Crack.”

With my title, you probably think I’m going to talk about movies, and I am. But not about the way they move me. I rely on a magazine or newspaper or puzzle for most of my movements.  Okay, that’s tacky and I apologize.  Now let’s move on.

No wonder foreigners have a hard time learning our language. Words have so many meanings, or they sound the same but mean different things.  Like there, their, and they’re. If you’ve read an English paper for one of your kids, you’ll never see these spelled right.  For example, “There dogs are over their licking they’re private parts,” is pretty typical subject matter for an English paper around my house. If you didn’t notice anything misspelled, then you probably didn’t have Mrs. Massengill for an English teacher.

She would not tolerate anything short of perfection. That’s why she thought we were perfect idiots. The girls all wore very short skirts to class, and I remember one day she was sitting at her desk droning on about something while we pretended to take notes, and out of the blue she said, “You can’t even image what I have to look at from up here with those skirts.”

Well, first thing every one of us girls did was snap our legs shut, then we immediately started imagining the view, and she was wrong, we could imagine it very clearly, especially the guys. They started squirming in their seats and dropping pencils on the floor to verify they’re imaginations.

Did you catch that misspelled they’re? This story reminds me of the guys in my 8^th grade art class. The teacher wasn’t all their (another one), so we had total freedom to amuse ourselves. Boys in that class used to drop pencils non-stop. They’d drop a pencil, lean way over to pick it up, sneak a long look down the aisle, then sit back up and do it again. Pieces of broken pencil tips littered the floor like confetti. It looked like those video games where you bop the rodent on the head as he’s coming out of the hole, except with about 12 of them moving at  the same time.

So why don’t movies move me? I’ll get back with you when their’s more time.

I guess I revealed in my last blog that I talk to myself. Actually, it’s really just thinking out loud. Except that sometimes I do answer. After I say something stupid, which occurs more often than you might think, the first thing I do when I get alone is start in with, “I can’t believe you said that, what were you thinking?”…“I don’t know, it just slipped out.”…“I should have just left you at home…”Well why didn’t you?…”Next time I will.”

I talk to my 9 pound Yorkie Poo quite a bit when there’s no one in the house. I say things like: “Let’s go make lunch,  yo momma is starving!” I usually make it sound a little cutesy, because if someone’s listening, like a burglar hiding under the bed, I don’t want him to think I’m crazy.

If you work from home and spend a lot of the day alone, you’re going to talk to yourself. There’s a profound need to hear a human voice, even if it’s your own. That’s why solitary confinement is such a dreaded punishment, except for a couple of husbands I know, who probably fantasize about it.

But when you get in the habit of talking to yourself, it starts happening around other people. If I’m golfing and hit a decent ball, by accident, I’ll cheer it all the way. “Go, baby, flly, fly, fly, fly, fly!” Realizing what I’ve done, I’ll make up some sheepish cover story, like: “I’m just trying to help it along on sound waves,” but nobody’s buying it. I can hear them thinking, “She’s a couple of clubs shy of a full set, but it was a nice shot.”

I know I’m not the only one chattering away to myself because more than once I’ve been in a ladies bathroom and heard a woman come in, thinking she’s alone in there, and whisper to herself, “Who does she think she is with a comment like that? I ought to march right back out there…” or some such. You know that she knows she got caught because when you start rustling around, she gets very, very quiet, and she won’t come out of that stall until you’re gone.

We all do it, I’m not ashamed of it, and as someone very wise once said, “You’re not crazy until the toilet starts talking back.”

I went to a gathering last night and, as usual, saw many displays of cleavage all over the room. I call them fashion fruits. A couple of grapefruits were nestled in a fluffy pink sweater.  Cantaloupes hovered behind a saggy green tank top. And the plums, the poor little plums, straining to be noticed in a white scooped-neck t-shirt.

One set vied for center of attention. The turquoise top they were in plunged quite low, and I couldn’t really fit them into my little fruit metaphor except that they were like two oranges in flesh-tone socks that gravity was hell-bent on dragging to her waistline.

The problem for me is that I never know where to look. It’s distracting – I’m trying to focus on the person’s face, but those casabas are practically screaming at me to look down. A rat could scurry across my bare foot and I’d be like somebody in a neck brace.

For people like me who are never sure what to do, I think it’s high time we get this thing out in the open. Women are always tossing out compliments about someone’s hair or shoes or clothes.  We could just add,  “And that cleavage of yours is quite remarkable, it just makes your whole outfit. And it’s so natural looking!”

If it becomes socially acceptable to notice and comment, then the awkwardness will disappear. All those women last night could have complimented each other’s endowment, and the married men, reduced to enjoying the display with sideways glances, could openly relish the titillation. “Yes, I certainly have to agree with my wife, your cleavage is just breathtaking!”

When someone establishes the proper etiquette in these situations, everyone will breathe a huge sigh of relief.  Meantime, those of us with apricots and kiwis are counting the days until it’s turtleneck season.