Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Humor comes in many forms


ΤΗΕ CARY NEWS
carynews.com
Humor comes in many forms 
BY TERRI ANDERSEN
I like to listen to preacher Joel Osteen's television program every week, and one of his recent topics was on the healing power of laughter. He mentioned that it's a good remedy for stress, it can build your immune system and even lower your blood pressure, in addition to possibly helping you sleep better.
He went on to say a joyful Spirit can keep you young (senior citizens, take note) and could even let you live longer. Don't forget to laugh, he advised, no matter how old you are, and don't let grumpiness take over your life. A happy heart and a cheerful mind is good medicine at any age, and it pleases God to see his children joyful, preacher Osteen added. Thankfully there's been much laughter in the Andersen household in the many years of our lives together, and I'd like to share some of the simple things that contributed to that laughter. Husband Herb's parents were born in Norway and the family name Andersen (ending with "sen") is more typical there and in Denmark (Hans Christian Andersen) than the "son" ending which is how most people automatically spell Anderson. A short time ago my daughter-in-law's mother wanted to reach my husband
to ask him a question about a computer problem. She looked in the telephone book for our number under the proper spelling of our name but couldn't find us. When she asked her daughter if we were listed in the phone book, the daughter asked her mother if she tried looking under “o-n," to which the mother replied, "Oh, I didn't know his name was Owen.” We all got a laugh out of that.
Another silly laugh producer came about because I often walk around the house in socks or stockings. My husband is always asking me why I don't just put on slippers. I told him the socks or stockings tell me if there is anything like a crumb or a grain of something on the floor that needs to be picked up. Cute Scandinavian that he is, he facetiously asked "In what language do they tell you that, in Feetish?".
Then there was the incident in the supermarket when we were adding a bottle of wine to our groceries. Evidently the clerks have to be sure they are not selling alcohol to a minor, so they're required to post the buyer's age on the purchase receipt. A little while back they actually asked for your birth date, but it seems the practice later changed to just having the clerk use any date he or she chose in calculation of a customer's age. A lot of people probably don't even look to see what date was chosen, but just for the fun of it, I do. When a date makes me much younger than I am, that's fine with me. But one time in 2008 a very young clerk posted my birth year as 1908. Dear husband thought that was hysterical. Evidently the clerk saw me as 100 years old, but even though I didn't think it was so funny, I had to laugh as I attributed the clerk's calculation to his youth. Anyone over 50 looks ancient to the young.
Then there's our chicken story. Whenever I roasted a whole chicken I always ended up eating the wings because neither my husband nor the kids thought there was enough meat on them to bother with and I didn't want anything to go to waste. Visiting some friends for dinner one day, I noticed that they roasted a good-sized chicken and I thought I'd finally get to eat some of the white meat for a change. Then I heard my husband tell the hostess,"Save the wings for Terri; that's the part of a chicken she likes best." That story got a lot of mileage in our house.
To go back a little farther in time, the company I worked for was sending a few of us secretaries to a seminar entitled "Humor in the Workplace.” The speaker had us smiling or laughing out loud many times during the presentation. When she was finished she asked us all to randomly հuց at least three people before we left the seminar. Everyone was in high spirits and hugging everyone around them. When I went to hug a woman standing by herself she backed up and seriously said, "I already hugged three people." I couldn't help but wonder if she brought any humor back to her workplace.

(Article was online at carynews.com)

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