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Category: humor

The Sunday Funnies

The Sunday Funnies

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The pandemic is creating many strange situations, some terrifying, some exasperating and some … unexpectedly funny. I just experienced the latter.

The humor came not from one of the many memes circulating via group text, nor from a streaming late-night comedy show but from the videotaped Mass provided by my Catholic parish.

The service was conducted with utmost respect and solemnity, but a series of little blunders left me chuckling by the end. First, the voice track of the video lost sync with the action, which made all the speakers look like they were being dubbed. Next, church bells started ringing loudly toward the end of the service, which seemed to surprise everyone on the altar.

And then there was today’s presider  — a puckish older man who brings smiles even on ordinary Sunday. When it came time for the sign of peace, Father Dick shrugged, looked around and finally settled on a jolly, window-washer-type wave. Next, he had to be reminded to alert parishioners to the food van in the parking lot today (a whispered reminder from the pastor that was transmitted to the listeners through the mic Father Dick was wearing on his vestments). And finally, he began the dismissal before giving the blessing. When he realized his mistake, he knocked on his head and said, “Well, at least some things are happening like usual around here.” It was a splendid self-deprecating  recovery that left me laughing out loud.

I’m not sure Hollywood will be calling my church anytime soon. But … maybe they should.

Absolutely Ridiculous!

Absolutely Ridiculous!

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Early January requires a sense of humor, I’ve decided. Holidays behind us, long nights and bad weather ahead, we must cultivate a lighter way of looking at things. This does not come easily — especially with the doom and gloom that come to us regularly from the airwaves and our phones.

Watching comedies helps. So does talking to upbeat people, animals (though they seldom talk back) or, in a pinch, to one’s self (again, talking back seldom happens, or at least let’s hope that it doesn’t).

The right kind of book can also do the trick. The Salt Path, which I just finished, is one example; of course there are thousands of them. And then there is noticing the silly and ridiculous details of daily life. That works best of all.

Shell Art

Shell Art

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If rocks and shells could talk, these would laugh, whistle and shout. Look at us, they’d say. Someone has picked us up off the beach, spiffed us up, cast us as heroes in a crazy beach novel.

Here we are telling a joke:

Here we are sharing a tale:

We have no idea why we were willed into being, what our creator has in mind for us. But for now, we are alive and transformed on this Gulf Coast beach.

Birthday Surprises

Birthday Surprises

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An email this morning told me a package had been delivered.  I got a kick out of this — the fact that I had come in through the garage last night and overlooked this large item on the front stoop, being informed of it through a bunch of 1s and 0s on my computer. It was a funny way to begin this last day of November, the birthday of two people I love — my daughter and my brother.

But that was just the first surprise.  The second happened when I was lugging in the first — and Copper trotted around the front of the house (where he is never, ever allowed to be because he will run away) and right through the front door. The backyard gate must have been left open.
Whatever the case, it was all meant to be — the package left out overnight so that I could be there when Copper escaped, could usher him back where he belongs. The rescue of a dog that means so much to the birthday girl.
Yes, it’s often a random world — but sometimes it’s not. Today is one of those times.
Hats Off!

Hats Off!

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Reading today’s obituary of Mary Tyler Moore (the only front-page story I could stomach in today’s Washington Post), I thought about what set this actress apart.

She called herself a “funny straight woman,” and that was part of it. There was her spunkiness, her niceness, her grace under pressure. But there was more.

A decade younger than my parents she was still part of that generation, a generation that’s vanishing and that I miss more every day. And one of the things I miss most about them is their self-deprecation. They just didn’t take themselves as seriously as we do.

Moore said she was reluctant to be a symbol of women’s liberation, and tried not to think about the 50 million people watching her on TV. A photo that accompanied the obit showed her mimicking a statue of herself, hand upraised, right before she doffed her hat and threw it into the air.  

(Photo: People.com)

Pre-Dawn Haul

Pre-Dawn Haul

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Today I woke up early. Was it the rain? Was it a dream? Does it matter?

So I came downstairs and started looking through old file folders. This was not a completely random exercise. I needed notes I’d kept in one of them.

I found much more. There were two pieces I’d forgotten I’d written, a letter from a former student telling me that one of her essays was about to be published, and a solicitation for an author to write a book on creative praise programs across the top of which I’d scribbled, “For the ‘Can you believe it?’ file. “

The solicitation went something like this: Smart managers are learning that to keep Gen X and Gen Y workers happy requires celebration mailboxes, applause notes, prize packages, even balloons and confetti. A potential author would be familiar with these kind of programs and able to write a book about them. My question: Would a person familiar with such programs have not already slit his or her wrist?

Still, not a bad pre-dawn haul for a unrepentant packrat. How glad I am that I looked through those files and found what I did. I start the day a little more cheerfully now. Not praised but amused, which is much better.

The Fine Print

The Fine Print

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The Catholics are at it again. I love them, of course. I’m one of them. But their pronouncements can make me cringe. One of the latest is about cremation.

It used to be verboten. The resurrection of the body and all of that. But now, for reasons I don’t completely understand but which may have to do with the number of people on this earth and the popularity of the practice, it’s allowed as long as the cremains are buried respectfully. No scattering the ashes about in woods and fields and mountain tops. No keeping them in jars on mantels.

I read a letter in our diocesan newspaper last night. Can I be buried at sea? was the question. And the answer: Yes, if your ashes are in a special container.

For some reason this morning all of this makes me smile. I mean, if the good Lord is capable of raising us on the Last Day, is it really going to matter if we’re in a jar or the ground or scattered across the Appalachian Trail?

I have to hand it to Catholics, though, because we care about these things. And that’s the point, isn’t it?

Oldest Living Albatross Lays Egg

Oldest Living Albatross Lays Egg

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It’s been hard lately to make my way through the national and political news sections of the newspaper. Which is why I’ve been open to other, more offbeat stories. Like Wisdom, the 66-year-old albatross who is still laying an egg every year. Just laid one a few days ago, in fact.

Wisdom was banded on the Midway Atoll in 1956, so scientists are pretty sure that she’s truly a (late) middle-aged gal.

What an inspiration! Here she is at a time when many human females might be slowing down. Instead, she’s adding to her brood.

Is she worrying about her children? Heck no, she’s too busy having ’em.

And as for her appearance, she’s smooth of feather and sleek of bill. No tummy tuck or chin lifts for her.

(Photo: courtesy Smithsonian.com)

Bustopia

Bustopia

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Should we coin a word for the way it feels to run to a bus stop only to find no one there and the next bus not due for  30 minutes?  Shall we add in early darkness and a brisk north wind? Shall we also include the uncertainty of whether there even is a next bus?

Lonely doesn’t do it. Bereft … maybe. Some combination of tired and cold and anxious and angry. Bustopia? Like the gloomy imaginings of a dystopian novel only it’s actually happening.

Let’s add a ray of hope, though. The other commuters, when they finally show up, are proof that there will be another bus. They bring gallows humor and crazy stories.

The bus stop is no longer a cold, lonely, windswept place. Now it’s just cold and windswept. Brave New Bustopia.

Castle in the Clouds

Castle in the Clouds

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I sit at a stoplight, one of several long ones I’ve already encountered on the way home. I’m running late and the light takes forever. I strum my fingers on the steering wheel, tap my feet, fiddle with the knobs of the radio and then fiddle with them some more. I look up, light’s still red. 

It’s then that I think that I have become Fairfax County. Its tempo is my tempo. Its impatience is my impatience.  I drive too close to the car in front of me as I listen too intently to public radio. I have come to believe that what I do every day is more important than it actually is.

What I need is a summer off. Humility Camp. In which people from the East Coast are sent to carefully chosen out-of-the-way burgs in the Heartland. Let us walk down empty sidewalks to the only store that sells the New York Times, only to find that there is no Times delivery today. The wireless in our rented two-bedroom will long since have fizzled. Our Kindle is out of charge.

There is nothing to do, then, but to lie back on the grass, look up at the sky and find a castle in the clouds.