Creating some hope – Part II

New York Times Best Selling Author Stephen King is known for his horror novels that scare the bejesus out of us and give us nightmares. He’s an expert in fear and the unknown. Instead of fear, though, I love his thoughts on another human experience: laughter.

He wrote that “You can’t deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.”

Life can be challenging, but laughter helps us see the possibilities and gives us the nudge we need to let our hair down. I’m not sure I would want a life without laughter. If you ask me, it wouldn’t be much of a life.

I’m running this series each Monday, from February 17 to March 17 to help point out the good in life.

Six Things That Make Me Laugh:

• Reading a journal or something that I wrote years ago and seeing how things have changed — what I thought mattered the world at the time doesn’t seem so important now. Woody Allen put it another way. “If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.”
• The late Robin Williams on stage. The audience glued to him, ready to laugh and be amazed. And he starts riffing about life in America or a million other topics. It was one laugh after another after another.

Robin Williams – 2006

• A Dad Joke that’s so silly that it’s actually funny. Here goes. “Which days are the strongest? Saturday and Sunday. The rest are weekdays.”
• I know Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck broke up last year. Nonetheless, I absolutely love the Dunkin DunKings’ commercial they were in with Matt Damon and Tom Brady for Super Bowl 58. Every time I see the darned thing, I laugh. I’m not sure if it’s Damon shaking his head in embarrassment. Or JLo’s “Tom, you can stay” but it causes me to break out into a laugh. (For the record, I wasn’t a big fan of Dunkin’s most recent commercial in this year’s Super Bowl.)

Dunkin’ — Super Bowl LVIII ‘The DunKings’ Commercial

• I had a friend in college who would follow others around in the grocery store. When he told me this story, I thought it was going to be a desperate confession. I thought he was going to admit that he was shop lifting or stealing from others. Instead, when they weren’t looking, he would put random things in their shopping carts — the stranger the better, baby food for an old couple, condoms, medication for hair loss, a laxative treating constipation, anything outlandish. Then, he would watch to see the customer’s reaction in the checkout line. It was a silly thing, but sometimes you need silly.
• And finally, who doesn’t love Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia playing Heart and Soul on the floor piano in FAO Schwarz in the 1988 movie Big.

“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.” —E. E. Cummings

The next post in this series will run on Monday, March 3.

Creating some hope – Part I