A Laugh In Time

"If all else fails to boost your spirits - find something to laugh about!"

I was just going through one of my quote files and found this quote. How often do we really laugh? How often do we mope around for a couple of hours before eventually trying to find something to laugh about?

I love to laugh! I love to laugh about anything that strikes me as even vaguely funny. If I can't find anything else to laugh about then I will make something up and laugh at myself! More often then not I end up laughing at myself anyway, or end up making other people laugh at me. As a consequence, I have ended up with some very funny - and some very embarrassing - stories of times when I was doing something silly and someone caught me in the act!

To help you laugh a little today, I'll let you hear about one of my funny stories ...

I was walking in a park with my family. The park had a big hill with many different paths criss-crossing across the slopes. One slope of the hill was just grass, with three paths going across it at different levels. A hill fraught with dangerous possibilities.

My sister was standing on the top path and I was standing on the bottom path. I was irresistibly seized with an impulse to be silly. I decided that this was a good place to act some Shakespeare. Going down on my knees, I quoted a couple of lines, "What light through yonder window breaks? 'Tis the east and Juliet is the sun!" As I wasn't in the habit of memorizing vast tracts of Shakespeare as a child, I ran out of lines almost as soon as I had begun.

I turned to Anne of Green Gables. Just a couple of weeks ago we had been watching Anne of Avonlea and had giggled over Anne's rendition of the song played at Diana's wedding:

"Oh, promise me that someday you and I,
Will take our love, together, to some sky!"

Remaining on one knee, I threw my arms into the air in a dramatic gesture, then clasping my hands and thrusting out my elbows, I broke into full mock-opera-singer song.

I had just got to the part of taking our love to some sky, while my sister collapsed in giggles at the top of the hill, when out of the trees and onto the middle path walked a couple and their two teenage boys.

People say that they leave their words hanging in midair. If ever words hung in mid-air, mine did that afternoon. I stopped mid-warble, kneeling on the grass, one hand clasped to my chest, the other held sky-wards, while the couple and their children walked silently along the path. You could feel their shock, their total lack of comprehension.

No sooner had they disappeared from sight, then I regained use of my limbs, dropping my arms and scrambling hastily to my feet - something I was totally incapable of doing only a moment before.

My voice took a little longer to come back to me. I can't remember what I said when it returned, but I do know that it wasn't anything to do with love or the sky.