I Laughed

One of the things I treasure most in life is humor. I love sharing laughter with people. I'm pretty sure that laughter can be part of God's grace, healing us, bringing joy to our souls. I recognize that it can also be dark and harmful, but I'm going to say that dark, harmful humor is a perversion of this good gift (like all evil is, to borrow a definition from a great theologian). And so, on this late evening, I'll share with you some things that have made me laugh over the last few weeks.

My mother always carries large bags. It's probably part of being a mom; she carries a huge bag so that she always has everything anyone might need. I'm convinced that the contents of her purse could keep someone alive for a week if they were stranded on a desert island. But I digress. My mother came to visit me a few weeks ago, and on the night of her arrival I took her to dinner. She offered to pay, then picked up her backpack (an easier carry-on than a purse) and tried to find her billfold. She took out six or eight different items, covering half of our table, before she finally found the billfold. (I was reminded of the scene in Oscar where the title character is taking all of the weapons off one of his henchmen and, after taking a huge pile of things including a mace, a billy club, a small pistol, and brass knuckles from the man, says, "It's like disarming Germany!") Then, once she had located it, she remembered that the card she was going to use to pay for dinner was already in an outside pocket of the bag from when she'd checked in for her flight earlier that day. We laughed for five minutes straight at the huge pile of stuff on the table.

I went to see a movie the other night and overheard the following conversation:
Boy, 11 years old: "There should be a law that action movies aren't allowed to have any kissing. Yuck!"
Girl, 13 years old: "An action movie without kissing would be like trying to eat lunch without a mouth."

I took Charlie to the dog park today. He likes the dog park and enjoys chasing the other dogs around and wrestling with them, and it's great exercise for him. However, my 60-something pound dog is, apparently, very attractive to much smaller dogs. Nearly every time I take him to the dog park, some small dog makes unwelcome advances toward Charlie, and Charlie ends up with a much-smaller dog humping his leg. He doesn't seem to know what to make of this, so instead of fighting the smaller dog off, he usually tries to run away. So, my large dog is frequently chased all around the dog park by strangely-gyrating mini-dogs. This evening, Charlie responded to this behavior by finding a muddy spot near my feet and flopping down in it. So I was forced to give my dirty, stinky dog a bath. Charlie is usually well-behaved about baths, but he still has a bad habit of waiting until he's out of the bathroom to shake all the excess water out of his fur. So, while Charlie smells a bit better after a bath, my entire apartment ends up smelling much, much worse: like wet dog. I'm sure there's a better way of doing this, but for the life of me I can't figure out what it is. So I laugh at the water droplets everywhere and take joy in the goofy face Charlie makes when he's all wet.

I got new furniture for my balcony as an early birthday present. It was a pain to put together, but it looks very nice. And as excited as I am to have lovely, cozy new furniture so I can sit on my balcony to enjoy this gorgeous fall weather, I think I'm more excited about the giant cardboard box the furniture came in. I'm planning to make it into a spaceship before it goes to the dumpster. After all, doesn't every twenty-something professional need to make a pretend spaceship now and then?