HUMOR TO THE RESCUE
Have Two Laughs and Call Me in the Morning
A different kind of medicine to heal the hurt
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Author’s note: This was one of my early pandemic pieces where we weren’t feeling comfortable and I was in search of a laugh…just one little laugh. While my jokes aren’t very funny, writing them made me laugh.
Sometimes it can be hard to find a reason to laugh, and — usually — those are the times we need laughter most.
The monotony of plodding through indistinguishable days can leave us lethargic — full of spiritual malaise. In defense of rediscovering our spunk, I am offering a tribute to the curative power of humor.
The photo for this piece should make most people smile, but just in case, I offer two self-created lame jokes that will either make you chuckle or decide that you can do better. To that, I say, “Please do.” I also add, “You can also look at those cute kids who are masked and maybe imagine a whole new dimension to the masking visage.
Anyway, here goes my attempts at humor:
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: He was practicing social distancing.
And for some darker humor:
Q: How many people does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. There is nothing to see.
Or alternatively:
A: One, but where did he get the light bulb, and do you know if that store had any Lysol or flour?
I have been on the lookout for something funny to lift my mood, and we now know that I am not a good creator of humor. Fortunately, episodes in my life give me all the material that I need. Here are some…under the working title of Humor in the Time of Coronavirus (a riff on Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera).
- My children’s staged intervention upon my need for a haircut. When my kids noted that my vanity was in full bloom, they became the parents and appealed to my “sense of right.” The result was that I waited two weeks until we passed peak COVID-19 to get my cut, which my hairstylist and I responsibly engineered with the use of masks, gloves, and disinfectants. Afterward, the kids were…
