Why is it that when some of us get pushed right up to the edge of handling just about all we can in life, that’s when life get’s the funniest?   I’ve often shared with my Boarding School mates that one of the devices that helped us “survive” being sent (in most cases) to a military (for the boys) religious (not that there’s anything the matter with that) school for three years was humor.  I almost began making constant brrr brrr sounds with my fingers on my lips when my parents told me that I would be living at this school when I was fifteen.

Off and on in my life, from the most extreme cases to the not-so-extreme when I sidled right up the edge of going over because I can’t handle anything more…humor just bursts out of me.  I blame both my parents for that.  We kids often begged our mother to make those funny faces that only she could make by raising one eyebrow (ambi-brows) at a time and making her lips go sideways (both sides) at a time.  Very talented but never brought her to show off at school.  My father is hilarious both with words and actions.  And both my brothers are too.  Anyway. Being an in-the-closet-comedian, whenever something drastic would happen in my life I’d always remember that even though whatever was happening at the time could really suck, it could also be really good “material” later on.

Take an awful car wreck at 21 when I passed out at the wheel and woke up just as I was going over an overpass to fly down and land just south of the railroad tracks.  Doesn’t seem like hilarity abounding right off the bat does it?  But I can’t tell you how many laughs I’ve been able to milk out of the story when I tell about the policeman who first found me. And it’s all because of a retainer that I wore at the time that had one false tooth on it.  The policeman came upon me after I had tumbled around in the car, crawled out the back window and up the 70 foot embankment on my butt.  As you can imagine, I was covered with blood, sweat and tears as well as everything in-between.  I kept passing out off and on and woke up as the policeman crab walked over to me, jumping back and forth like a sumo wrestler on steriods.  Part of what was freaking him out was that retainer which had landed on my chest.  I’m sure in his brain, he was connecting the dots of my bleeding facial orifices and that retainer…but incorrectly.   I remember trying to calm him down by saying to him, “it’s okay, I usually don’t look like this”. True story.

I bring this up, this trying not to take ourselves and this life too seriously now because I almost choked on my spit this morning waking up to NPR hearing about the economy (AGAIN) and Afghanistan (AGAIN) as well as the local weather report of 105 degrees (AGAIN) with another bright shiny day for us to enjoy.  There’s nothing to do but laugh at the insanity of it all.  Either that or dive down to the drain in my pool and stay there forever.  And I mostly like this life, so I think I’ll find a way to weather it (pun intended) as best I can.

How about you? Are you taking yourself too seriously today?