Nothing boosts drooping spirits like a shot of humour just as nothing dispels gloom like an infusion of wit. And after a trying day at work bedevilled by knotty problems, what better way to unwind—even if only for a short while—than with a clutch of rib-ticklers?
Recently I came across a cartoon, by far the funniest I’ve seen so far. An elderly woman is making her confession to an elderly priest. “Father, I beat up a politician today,” she says and the priest replies, “Mention only your sins and not your good deeds!”
Once I read about a young mother’s cleverness in countering her five-year-old’s curiosity. “Is our cat a daddy cat or a mummy cat?” he demanded aloud in a packed bus. “He’s a daddy cat,” the woman replied patiently. “How do you know he’s a daddy cat?” the boy persisted. A hush fell over the passengers as everyone strained to hear how the mother would tackle this poser. “Well,” she said, clinching the issue, “He’s got whiskers, hasn’t he?”
Exemplifying absent-mindedness, I’m reminded of a man, a strong advocate for seat belts, who scrupulously buckled himself in whenever he drove his car. Once he was using a borrowed car which didn’t have seat belts. Forgetting this, he parked in front of his office, unbuckled his belt and stepped out—to find his trousers slipping down his legs!
Munnar’s former British tea planters were known to have a robust sense of humour. Once a planter slipped on some spilt tea and fractured his arm, inspiring a prankster to ink this telltale message on his plaster cast: “Tea Break”.
Another complained that his day usually got off to a bad start because as he put it, “Every morning my wife and the tea begin to simmer at the same time!”
Another hilarious story I read illustrates the gullibility of some industrial security guards. Every evening a factory worker headed home pushing a wheelbarrow with some straw in it. Daily the guard checked the straw, found nothing under it and let the worker go. This went on for several days and finally one day the guard’s curiosity got the better of him. “Look,” he said, “I’m retiring shortly. Just tell me what are you stealing—I won’t tell anyone.” So the worker confessed, “I’m stealing wheelbarrows!”Elimination of tension is the name of the game and jocularity is perhaps the best relaxant. As a physician sagely observed, “Live tense—and you’ll soon become past tense!”
Email: gnettomunnar@rediffmail.com