One of my aims as a mother, when my children were small, was to teach them how to see the funny side of things that happened to them, not to take themselves too seriously.
After all, if we can laugh at ourselves, we'll always have someting to laugh about.
It's nice when people laugh with you, but not at you, that just hurts.
I'm a great believer in the restorative power of humour. A bad day at school, or trouble in the playground, and then a chocolate biscuit and half an hour of Mr. Bean and nothing seems quite so bad, after all.
Obviously there are serious problems that can't be laughed away. I'm talking about the every day challenges, not the heavy stuff.
I would buy them bumper books of jokes. These served also to help them cope with the ambiguities of the English Language.:-
"Can a giraffe jump higher than a house?", "Yes, because houses can't jump".
"Two silkworms were in a race. They ended up in a tie".
"A man goes to the doctor, and tells him he keeps having a recurring dream. First he's a wigwam, then he's a teepee. "It's driving me crazy", he tells the doctor. "What's wrong with me?"
"Oh that's easy", says the doctor. "You're two tents."
"What do you say to a Buddhist hot-dog vendor?" "Make me one with everything".
Jokes can make you groan or laugh out loud. Often it's the way it's told that matters. You can hear someone tell you a joke that you've heard many times, and it makes you laugh, because of the way it's told.
It's the singer, not the song.
All my life humor has gotten me through crisis, often with disapproving looks. The worse was when my baby sitter's husband died. My friend and I pulled up in front of the house. There was a shopping cart in the front yard.
ReplyDelete"Pity," my friend said. "They couldn't afford a hearse."
We lost it and hopefully the widow thought our red eyes were from crying not laughing when we entered the house.