Laughter is the best medicine
Some readers have told me they have enjoyed several of my humor efforts. Most of these Telegram weekly essays have concluded with such an attempt.
I’ve mentioned before about our 6 a.m. daily coffee clutch at Julie’s wherein enjoying many laughs is a major objective. We go there with an expectation of humor and are very rarely disappointed. The day may be dark and dreary; we may have a physical part hurting (my knee) but the world has brightened a great deal by the time we depart.
Was it Bob Dylan who is reported to have said, “You can fake an orgasm, but you can’t fake laughter.” Once the kidding, teasing and nonsense begins at the coffee clutch, the whole world looks brighter. When I leave at 7 to pick up my first volunteer drive, the day’s prospects look very much improved.
This year for the first time a one week international symposium was held in Spain (University of Granada) on humour (their spelling) and laughter. Our coffee clutch got the jump on them; we’ve been at this for over 30 years. Their symposium literature said that laughter reduces pain, benefits the immune system, lowers blood pressure, improves job performance and connects people emotionally. Hopefully. you aren’t allowing all this cost free medicine pass you by.
A few quotes on the value of laughter:
Norman Cousin, “Laughter is inner jogging.” (The benefits of an aerobic workout and is less work too)
Victor Borge, “Laughter is the closest distance between two people.:
E.E. Cummings, “The most wasted of all days is the one without laughter.”
Michael Pritchard, “You don’t stop laughing because you grown old; you grow old because you stop laughing.”
Some retirees get their laughter and fun in different ways. The following fellow tells his story. I close with it because it will bring a chuckle and I think it was a fictitious story made up for that purpose only:
Working people frequently ask retired people, like me, what they do to make life interesting. So for an example, I tell them about a day I went downtown and went into a store. I was only in there for about 5 minutes and when I came out there was a cop writing out a parking ticket. I said to him, “Come on officer, how about giving a person a break?” He ignored me and kept writing the ticket. I called him a fascist Nazi. He glared at me and starting writing another ticket for “having worn tires.” So I called him a “member of the Gestapo.” He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first. Then he started writing a third ticket. This went on for about 20 minutes. The more I abused him, the more tickets he wrote. Personally I didn’t care; I came downtown on a bus, but I try to have a little fun each day now that I’m retired.
Bernie Hughes, Ed.D, is a retired educator who resides in Superior. He can be reached at Bernie1@cpinternet.com.
Descargar
