Marcie "Mom" Glanzer's Column
Monday, February 27, 2006
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Why is it that something that may not be so funny any other
time, is hilarious when you are in a setting where laughter would be
inappropriate? Has this ever happened to anyone else, or is it just me?
There are a few times that something has struck me funny, and I have gone into
hysterics, mainly because I know I shouldn’t be laughing. This happened a lot
when I was growing up. We would go to church every Sunday and when a couple of
girls get together, you can count on some giggling. My dad would look
disapprovingly over at me and I would try to stifle my laughter, usually not
successfully. You might think I would outgrow this, but alas, I have not! I
don’t know exactly what it is about a church, but things are a lot funnier
there. One Sunday, Jordan and I were in church and ahead of us sat a woman who
does not have a great sense of humor. There was a child in the rear pew (we’ll
call her Mary) who was fussing and making a lot of noise and this woman turned
around and gave such a horrendous look at the poor mother of the bratty kid,
that Jordan and I both chuckled. The grouchy woman resembled the lady from the
TV show “Weakest Link” and Jordan leaned over to me and said “Mary, you’re the
weakest link…goodbye!” and for some reason it struck me as funny and I started
to snicker…try as I might, I couldn’t stop and it soon turned into chortles
(there’s a word you don’t see often!) and I was shaking the whole pew. Tears
were streaming down my face and I couldn’t look at Jordan or I knew I’d pee my
pants. If she had said the same thing at home, it wouldn’t have been nearly as
funny.
Another time, Alex
was very sick and it was on a weekend, so I was stuck taking him to the
emergency room at the hospital. While we waited for a doctor to come in the
room, Jordan (yes, she was here again), made the comment that Alex looked like
“Donkey Lips” from the show “Salute Your Shorts”…a horrible show that my kids
watched for some ungodly reason. Alex had a loose front tooth and when he tried
to talk it flapped up and down and made him lisp like Donkey Lips which just
cracked me up. So while I should be worrying about his spiking fever, I’m
doubled over with laughter trying to keep my guffaws to a minimum. It doesn’t
help when there are 2 people trying not to laugh, because as soon as I looked at
Jordan we would crack up again. What made it even more funny was the way Alex
lay on the cot, unable to defend himself. I wonder what the doctors and nurses
on the other side of the curtain were thinking!
It wasn’t only Alex that could inspire laughter. When Ryan was about 5 I took
him to an eye doctor
for an exam. He
was perched up in the chair with this serious expression on his face and the
doctor put some big black framed glasses on him and asked him to read a chart on
the wall. The glasses were so huge and magnified his eyes, and I couldn’t help
it. I was laughing so hard, I tried to cover it up as coughing, but I don’t
think I fooled anyone. I took a coat and buried my face in it and tried to laugh
silently, praying my bladder would hold out. The thing is, if he had worn those
glasses at home, I probably wouldn’t have laughed at all, it was just the fact
that I knew I shouldn’t laugh which made it that much funnier.
There are a couple of things that I could think about…even at my mother’s own
funeral, and I know I would bust out laughing. I must share them with you. One
has to do with Alex again. When he was about 4 years old he received a
coloring/activity book that had partial pictures drawn and the child was
supposed to finish the
picture. It must have kept Alex and his siblings busy for
quite awhile, because I came across that one day and looked through it and
couldn’t believe that my little Alex would have done some of those drawings! I
think he had a bit of help from Ryan. One in particular has a car with a blank
license plate. The instructions are to fill in the license plate and Alex wrote
“Go to Hell”! It is so cute because some of the letters are backwards and it is
so childishly written…I laugh every time I get that book out. A couple other
pictures have some naughty drawings that I’m sure Alex was coached to draw by
“someone”. If I’m ever depressed, I hope someone finds that book!
There’s another story that, no matter how many times I hear it, cracks me up.
This is about a man that Jordan was once employed by. He had a habit of talking
nonstop and related things she would rather not have heard, but this one was a
gem. It seems “Joe” as we’ll call him was dating a woman we’ll call “Sue”. Joe
and Sue were both in their 50’s and Sue had a teenage daughter who didn’t like
her mother dating Joe. One Saturday night, Sue received a phone call from a
female telling her that Joe was cheating on her. This female told Sue all about
the affair she and Joe had been having and Sue hung up the phone, absolutely
furious with Joe. He was in the shower, getting ready for a big night on the
town, no doubt dreaming of scoring with Sue later on! He climbed out of the
shower and opened the bathroom door with a huge smile, when from out of nowhere
“SLAP” right across the kisser! Sue was pissed and she let him have it! Poor Joe
didn’t know what was going on…Sue wouldn’t let him explain. Later, it turned out
that Sue’s daughter and her friend had made the call, hoping to break up the
twosome. “Joe” told Jordan the whole story and didn’t think it was funny at
all…the 2 girls finally admitted what they had done and Joe and Sue patched it
up, but the thought of him with his big cheesy moustache getting blindsided
while naked is too funny!
One last place that is unhandy to have a laugh attack is in bed…lots of times
Dick will be drifting off to sleep while I lay there daydreaming. Something,
maybe thinking of Joe’s misadventure, comes to mind and I’ll start giggling,
softly at first and the harder I try to disguise it, the harder I laugh until
the whole bed is shaking. He’ll just sigh and put a pillow over his head.
Anyway, I guess laughing is better than crying all the time. I would like to
know if I’m the only one out there with this problem…well, I know I’m not,
because Jordan is the same way, but that is probably inherited. I will try to
include a couple of pictures from the coloring book that I mentioned. You have
to use your imagination to see what Alex was drawing, but suffice it to say, it
was pretty naughty!