Are you fun to live with?

As my pastor used to say, “Are you fun to live with?” He encouraged us to include lighthearted moments in our homes. He appreciated humor. As a young man his home life was anything but fun. His stepmother did not accept him or love him. He left home at a young age, something like fifteen or sixteen, and thumbed his way from Wisconsin to the West, where he found work as a cowhand. The road was rocky for awhile and then his life turned around because He met Jesus. Eventually he studied for the pastorate. He had a lot of healing and growing to do but in time God gave him a robust ministry. He is now retired.

Anyhoo, Pastor Pete loves humor and he incorporated that into our services. Almost every Sunday there was a joke to tell or something that would make us laugh.  Sunday evenings during the prayer service, he routinely told three or four jokes. We grew to expect it. I think humor helped him deal with life. He’d had extra pressure and struggles that most don’t have in regard his wife’s health. Pastor could make me laugh even when I was not in the mood for laughing. I couldn’t help it. I can be too serious so it was good for me.

Am I fun to live with?

Humor makes such a difference. It lightens it up wherever you are. A few weeks ago I was at a meeting where the entrepreneur, a writing coach, kept us in stitches with her wisecracks about errors writers make and funny things they do. It was really too funny. Dry wit is a winner.

When I first took notice of humor and how it can defuse a difficult situation was at my sister’s memorial service. We were sorrowing deeply. The air was thick with hurt and pain and confusion. Toward the end of the service, there was an open mic time. Many shared, including me. I was struggling, the tears kept surfacing. Near the end, amid many tearful comments, a pastor’s wife, a woman in her seventies, stood up and came to the front.

She paused, smiled at us, and then began a story. She talked about when her husband was the pastor of the church my family had attended during my youth, about her being the children’s church teacher when my sister was in the primary grades. She took us, there. How my little sister would attentively look at her with those big brown eyes while she was teaching and how every so often my sister would turn and look behind her to make eyes at little Richie S. and how he would make eyes back at her. We all laughed, picturing it in our minds. I remembered Richie, they were the same age. The tension in the room released like a big sigh, and we all felt relieved and everyone in the room relaxed.

Humor was just what we needed to cushion that day of sadness. I learned something that day and tucked the thought away and have since found opportunities to use it. A few years later, a lady I knew passed away. She was a go-getter but her health had been failing for quite some time. Her grown kids were not in the area so I would keep tabs on her. When the ability to drive was beyond her, I helped her sell her pickup truck. I was a friend of her daughter who was teaching out of the country at the time. The lady lived in the same complex as my father-in-law. The day she passed on, I was the first person called. I went right over.

I phoned her oldest son who I was not acquainted with, and it shocked him. I could hear it in his voice. He took it from there. Few people came to the service. People were invited to share. I was first up and already knew what I would say. It would have some humor because that helps. I talked about selling the lady’s pickup and how after negotiating the deal the buyer said to me, “She’s quite a character!” Everyone laughed right on cue because they knew it was true of her, she was quite a character. Her oldest son, the one I’d phoned, said to me afterwards, “Quite a character, huh?” We both grinned.

Tonight there was a bit of humor. I came home from my dad’s with all sorts of goodies that he had stockpiled from Costco runs. I put the snacks in a gallon jar in the pantry so I won’t eat too many. My daughter later comes home from work and retreats to her room. I tap on the door. “Come in,” she says. I hold up the jar of goodies, and we both laugh, no words exchanged. I tell her, “They’re in the pantry.” We laugh because we’ve been eating these same goodies for a few months now, whenever we go to visit him. Grandpa is Grandpa, he’s always liked the snacks, and we do appreciate him offering them to us. Reminds me of the tamale lady who comes by every other Saturday, but that’s another story!

So, I have a joke for you. This one came from a man in a wheelchair who came over to my mother and me at the care facility. She and I were comfortably conversing when he asked us if we wanted to hear a joke. I was hesitant, thinking, is it a dirty joke? He said, “You’ll like it.” I replied, “I hope I get it.” He smiled and then began to read it to us. Mother and I were both laughing, it was too funny. He gave me the paper and said it was a joke that had been around a long time.

Now it’s your turn to enjoy it! This joke is best when read out loud. lol

Once upon a time, a perfect man and a perfect woman met. After a perfect courtship, they had a perfect wedding. Their life together was, of course, perfect.

One snowy, stormy Christmas Eve, this perfect couple was driving their perfect car along a winding road, when they noticed someone at the side of the road in distress. Being the perfect couple, they stopped to help.

There stood Santa Claus with a huge bundle of toys. Not wanting to disappoint any children on the eve of Christmas, the perfect couple loaded Santa and his toys into their perfect car. Soon they were driving along delivering the toys.

Unfortunately, the driving conditions deteriorated and the perfect couple and Santa Calus had a serious accident. Only one of them survived!

Who was the survivor? (Men, Women: read on to see the answer.)

The perfect woman survived. She’s the only one who really existed in the first place. Everyone knows there is no Santa Claus and there is no such thing as a perfect man.

Women: Stop reading here. This is the end of the joke for you.

Men: Keep on reading.

So, if there is no perfect man and no Santa Claus, the perfect woman must have been driving. This explains why there was a car accident in the first place.

By the way, if you’re a woman and you’re reading this, this also illustrates a second point. Overly curious women often fail to follow directions!

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Are  you fun to live with?