Funny Stories

    I remember when I was in sixth grade, our teacher told us about the word "funny".  He said there are lots of different meanings to "funny".  There is funny-comical, funny-sad, funny-facetious, funny-suspicious, even funny-stinky.  There's funny-insolent,  funny-peculiar,  funny-ill, and funny- ludicrous.  So, I thought I'd try to tell some stories from my life to illustrate the facets of funny..


       Funny-Comical:  One Saturday morning, many years ago,  I was cleaning house and my little girl was watching television.   Because the living room - and, thus the TV- were in the center of the house, I had to walk past her to get from room to room as I cleaned.  Every time I wanted to walk past her, she would stick out her legs and say, "You have to pay the fee for the toll bridge."  I would dutifully drop an imaginary coin into the imaginary toll booth, and she would lower her legs.  Then, her game escalated to her saying, "You have to guess the magic word, and then I'll lower the bridge and you can get by."  I cooperated with this several times.  Of course, "the magic word" was different with each passage through the room, and the task grew more and more difficult and complicated with each trip. Mind you, on various trips, I was lugging around a load of laundry, a mop pail and mop, or a vacuum cleaner. On the final trip, she said, "You'll have to guess the magic word to pay the toll for the toll bridge to be lowered. (Giggle, giggle. giggle; smirk, smirk, smirk)".  So, I turned my backside toward the "toll bridge" and farted! You never saw a pair of little legs jerk down so fast!  The days of paying for the toll bridge were over!


  Funny-Sad: One day, when I was in my early twenties, I drove my grandmother to the post office.  As she was getting in the car, there was an advertisement on the radio for "Publisher's Clearing House"... You know the drill... "You can win One Million Dollars!  Just imagine Ed McMahon and the Publisher's Clearing House van arriving at you doorstep with YOUR check for One Million Dollars!!!"  So, like most people, I started into a discussion of what I would do if I won a million dollars.  I listed the typical things a young person would list: buy a house, a new car, travel...  Then, I asked Grama what she would do if she won a million dollars.  Her reply: "Oh, I couldn't accept it.  If I took the million dollars, they'd take away my Social Security checks." (Honest - this is a TRUE story... Her answer is permanently seared in my brain.  And, by the way, her check was about one-hundred dollars a month.) Sad-funny.


  Funny-facetious:  I've told this story before, but it's the best example I can think of.  While I was in the shower, my husband stuck his head in the bathroom and asked, "Oh, are you taking a shower?"  My reply, "No, I'm just checking to see if the hot and cold faucets are working."
     Funny-suspicious:  Last month we got an electric bill with an extra fee for fifteen dollars - no explanation, no nothing.  I said, " Y'know, there's something funny about this bill."  Neither of us laughed.
     Funny-stinky:  One evening after we went out to eat with another couple, they came in and visited for a while at our house.  We were all sitting in the living room, when our friend picked up the newspaper, folded it, and started waving it over the dog.  It took a moment, but then we surmised that something "smelled funny" in the general dog vicinity...


      Funny-insolent:  When I was in ninth grade, we had a math teacher who was...well...not very nice.  She was very picky about everything.  I remember the first day of class she told us (among other things), "If you ever think you need to "upchuck", just get up and leave the room!  Don't ask for permission... just leave the room... quickly."  Fast forward to near the end of the school year, and one of the more colorful characters in the classroom suddenly got up and started to leave the room.  The teacher shouted, "Stop! What do think you are doing?  And, don't get funny with me, young man!!!"  (funny-insolent).  He turned, and puked all over her shoes.  Miraculously, we all stifled our laughter until after the class was dismissed.
  

 Funny-peculiar:  Once I was at an art show where a few of my watercolor paintings were on display.  I ran into an ex-coworker with a speech impediment, who said, " Wow!  I didn't wealize you wah so AUTISTIC!"  I replied, "Oh, that's okay.  Most people don't know that about me."  (Oooh!  A double-"funnyism" ...  his comment was funny-peculiar, and my reply was funny-facetious!!!)
     Funny-ill:  I was in a very serious car accident.  It had snowed and iced, but the roads had been plowed and salted, and I was on my way home from work..  A semi truck ran into the passenger side of my car in the middle of an intersection.  My car slid on the ice and was caught by a guardrail on the driver's side.  The fire department had to pry the car open with "the jaws of life".  I was unconscious during the "prying", but I awakened as they were starting to move me, and I said, "I feel funny."
     Funny-ludicrous:  There was this guy I dated for a while.  He belched.  Loud. And a lot.  I tried to tease with him and "make light of it" by saying things like, "Wow!  I  REALLY like that!"  Or, "Gosh, I don't know what I'd ever do if you stopped that..."  One day we had a big argument, and the guy, always one for one-upmanship,  hollered, "Oh yeah, well, I don't think you really meant it when you said you liked my burps!"  (Gee, ya' think?)
     So, those are my definition-of-funny stories.  Hope you got a laugh or two out of them.

Shalom  Y'all - Twyla

  
 

The Sisters of Sarcasm

      Well, it's not that I really wanted the title... I earned it!
     Once upon a time, there were three women who all happened to enter nursing school at the same time.  They met in the back row of nusring 101, which was held in the auditorium.  Much of the early lectures was so basic as to nearly bring tears of boredom...one dark comment led to another, and the three of us became sisters.  Sisters in womanhood. Sisters in the fight to stay sane going to college in our thirties while surrounded by giggling girls just out of highschool.  Sisters in the  high form of humor known as sarcasm.  Not the HURTING kind, mind you... the intelligent kind of sarcastic humor... the kind that requires a knowledge of grammar, syntax, even spelling.  To be a sister of sarcasm, you also had to be a pro at puns.  And, like the stand-up comics, timing was everything.
     For example,  we took Anatomy and Physiology over the Summer;  this was the full course, usually lasting  three months,  crammed into six weeks.  To pass this class, you had to live, breathe, and eat Anatomy and Physiology for those six weeks.  There were four hours of lecture five days a week, plus lab time, which was when the REAL learning went on!   Being a cat lover all my life, I was absolutely mortified to open the drawer in the "morgue" and find that the subject of our dissection was feline!  Our threesome, the sisters of sarcasm, drew straws to see who would have "the honors" of doing the initial removal of fur, skin and fascia. Ugh.  Needless to say, I drew the short straw...
     Let me tell you, removing any sort of fur or skin which has been soaking in formaldehyde for a year or so is difficult!  Yucky. Smelly.  Even though we wore gloves, I had that formaldehyde odor stuck in my nostrils and in my hands the entire six weeks! I lost thirty pounds!!!  Maybe I should try it again sometime soon... (See, that was a bit of sarcasm, yes?)
     But, I digress. The three of us were lab "partners".  Yes, I know, partners implies two, but, there were three nontheless.  As I mentioned above, I was the one who removed all the outer stuff. revealing muscles, tendons, nerves, organs, and veins and arteries which had been injected with blue and red latex dyes so that they would show up. All the body systems were displayed before us.  Then, our instructor walked over, saw that the poor ol' cat had a big tumor on its bladder and declared that we would have to start over... the cat cadaver wasn't "safe" for us to work on, and would have to be incinerated.

I'll bet these cat owners wanted to incinerate them!

    
Oh, man!  Now, we had to do all the preliminary work over again!  And, this setback put us behind the other students.  Once again, we drew straws to see who would have to do the dirty work.  And, once again, I drew the short straw.  Disgusted, I dove into the project. Quickly this time.  No "Poor Kitty... I wonder if it was somebody's pet."  Just cut, tear, rip, cut, pull... well, you get the idea.  I got our second cat stripped in about one-tenth the time it took to do the first one.  The instructor came over for inspection, and said, " Well, Twyla, what have you learned so far?"  Deadpan, I replied, "There's more than one way to skin a cat."

       Okay, so I'm actually the Queen of Sarcasm.  I can't seem to help myself.  Puns, jokes, song lyrics, nicknames, rhymes, and odd little plays on words run through my movie screen all the time.  It's not that I WANT to be a smart***;  it just seems to be who I am!

You didn't really think I'd show a picture of me in the shower...

       Some people provide more fodder for this type of humor than others.  Enter Moshe... He walks into it on an almost constant basis.  For example, this morning  I was in the bathroom taking a shower.  Moshe walks in, and says, "Hey,  are you taking a shower?"  My reply, "No, I'm just in here checking to see if the water's working."  One day a couple months ago, I was in the kitchen.  I had the big pressure cooker going, two or three big pots cooking on the stove, canning jars everywhere... It's 90+ degrees in the kitchen, and I'm soaking wet from work, heat, and humidity.  Moshe walks in the back door and says, "Are you hot?"
Reply, "No. I LIKE looking like this. Oh, and feeling like this, too."


The Queen, wearing her crown...
                    


      Fortunately, Moshe always laughs. Well, almost always...  One time we were having a loud discussion - y'know what I mean?  Okay, we were arguing!  I don't remember at all what about.   I had gone to bed on the sofa.  Uh-oh!  In the middle of the night a naked Moshe came out to the living room to try to make ammends.I said something not-nice, and Moshe said,  "Well, I guess you think you wear the pants in this house."   My reply, "Well, I'm the only one wearing any."  He didn't laugh that time.


Shalom Y'all - Twyla