Off The Cuff

Laughter, The Best Medicine

Posted by: From Arkansas in Fun things, Just Stuff on Aug 06 2008

Welcome back!

You are probably tired of hearing about my hospital stay so I decided to talk about something near and dear to my heart. Laughter. There just is not enough of that in the world anymore. The comedies on television are mostly not that. Usually they are tearing down some person in the family. Fathers are the target a lot of the time. Moms get it too. The kids are all right and the parents wrong and that is supposed to be funny. Why?

For me, laughter is healing. It’s so much fun. Most of the time, we do not watch television shows that claim to be comedies anymore. We find things funny in our pets, things said by a family member, some supposedly serious shows that have a lot of fun in them. We love Stargate, SG1 for instance. The writers seemed to find things funny in every show. We agreed. Yes, I know that show is finished. The series over. But we see it on tv each day and love it. I got the first season for my birthday. And we purchased the second because we could not wait for another birthday or holiday to see more.

But life can be funny at times. And frankly, when it isn’t, that’s the time to find more things funny than tragic. I do not mean that we should laugh over someone else’s tragic circumstances like some do. I also do not mean that we should laugh over some show that makes it clear they are only showing unfortunate accidents when a family member sends in a video. Most of the time, that is not funny but the audience thinks it is. How is it funny when someone slams into a wall on a bike or takes a header into the water? What kind of person thinks that people hurting themselves is funny?

Good shows in the past were ones like The Carol Burnett Show and I Love Lucy. Those were funny shows. They have nothing like that now. What a shame that is. No one got hurt. No one was treated like crap. It was just good, simple fun.

A good, clean….I said CLEAN joke can be funny too. But most often, all you hear are the dirty jokes. I used to work at a place in Florida where they told dirty jokes fairly often. It wasn’t funny then and it isn’t now. They loved to give the “toilet paper” jokes at Christmas time. Why is that funny? I do not get that. My sis and I agreed that there was nothing funny about it.

So, what I believe is funny does not seem to be what others think is funny. But I will continue to enjoy those funny shows and clean jokes instead of feeling like I have joined the gutter crowd. And I hope you feel the same. If not, please do not inflict those dirty jokes or so-called comedies on me. I do not want them. But I will laugh today because I need it. Laughter is a wonderful medicine. More people ought to try it especially when there does not seem to be a reason to laugh.

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