Trying to get along with people and follow social dictates – or not – has given me some funny memories.
It’s hard to forget meeting Clive, my posh sister-in-law Elaine’s new boyfriend. She prepared us ahead of time by saying he was very spiritual, a trait she apparently admired. When he arrived in our home, he immediately sat cross-legged on our couch picking at his bare feet and peeling skin fragments off – long ones. I stared and unsuccessfully tried to look away. Elaine, normally bossy and dominant, didn’t say a word about his strange behavior. I watched the pile of skin pieces grow on my carpet and sofa. I’m far from being a neatnik or a prude, but I couldn’t imagine doing such a thing in front of my family. In private, I might indulge in a little foot-skin pulling. How could Clive heap bodily waste in front of family members he was meeting for the first time? A few weeks later, Elaine broke up with Clive and I could understand his lack of appeal. I chuckled when I imagined their strange, albeit brief joining: the refined and sophisticated Elaine with the gross, foot-peeling Clive.
A year later, the same sofa suffered another indignity. Chuck and Vera, distant relatives, visited us in our rental house, which came equipped with old furniture. With a 10-year-old son, we didn’t want to worry about keeping new furniture nice. The rickety couch favored a Scandinavian style with slender lengths of polished wood visible beneath the loose cushions. Chuck and Vera were both heavy. I stared with foreboding when they began to sit in the way a lot of weighty people do. After they bent their knees a little, stuck their hips back and chest forward, they dropped their abundant weight in a free fall onto the cushions, both at once. Crack! A deafening splintering sound filled the room. Horrified, I couldn’t believe the valiant sofa still stood, but it did. Chuck and Vera seemed oblivious and relaxed, looking around the room with pleasant expressions on their faces. I had no idea what to say, and apparently no one else did either because silence reigned. I had just poured coffee. After a few moments, I asked, “Cream?”
After Chuck and Vera left without further mishaps, I up-ended the sofa and found two pieces of timber split. I lashed them together with rope and the couch lasted another ten years, probably because Chuck and Vera never returned. This event happened about twenty years ago. The other day, I asked my adult son if he remembered that day. “Oh yeah, I’ll never forget that horrible cracking sound.” We shared a belly laugh.
Alarming laws of physics invaded my life again a year later. I’ve never admitted to anyone what happened to me on an ordinary Wednesday, while walking down a sidewalk in Honolulu. That morning when I got dressed, I didn’t take into account that I’d lost about five pounds. I pulled on my usual panties and donned a skirt. While striding along a street, I suddenly sneezed and my underwear fell off. I quickly grabbed my lacy neon pink dainties off the pavement, hoping no one noticed. I didn’t look around to check, but hurried, red-faced, on my way. My current mantra: with skirts, wear tight underpants.
I’ve decided that I want my dreadful experience to serve as a warning to all who wear skirts, including men in Polynesian lava-lava in Hawaii and Scottish men everywhere: remember to wear formfitting tighty-whities underneath. While excruciating at the time, when I think of that incident, I’ve enjoyed many an inner giggle. Whether embarrassing or strange, for decades, I have relished humorous and weird human foibles that have popped up from time to time.
Real Life – Real Laughs:
Humor When You Need It Most
Cate Burns’ thirty-eight non-fiction stories of heartfelt humor explore society’s foibles and personal snafus with insightful zingers that will delight readers. Burns casts an unstinting, cock-eyed look at personal change, friendship, sanity and courage.
“Absolutely LOVE the descriptions in this work. Very, very, very clever and, dare I say it? -unique. This is refreshing, funny, inventive and delightful.” -Sharon Whitehill, Ph. D.
