Maybe Laughter Is the Best Medicine
Barbara Schwartz
When you are down in the dumps, feeling bad, feeling sad, feeling forlorn, try a bit of laughter to pick up and perk up your spirits.
It doesn’t take an extremely funny joke or story to make you giggle. For example, the other night while I was in a meeting, one of the people present asked if she could tell a silly, maybe even stupid, story. We all agreed, and it went like this:
A couple was fast asleep at 3 a.m. when he was awakened by a huge rainstorm with thunder and lightning. Then there was a knock on the front door. He explained to his wife what was going on and that he would just go answer the door. He went to the door and was met with a stranger who told him that he “needed a push.” The man inside said, “Are you nuts? It’s pouring out there. Goodnight,” and he went back to bed. His wife asked what that was all about, and he told her. Her answer was swift and enthusiastic: “Do you remember when you had car trouble and a kind person helped you? It’s time to pay it forward.” So, he trudged to the door and opened it to the thunderous rains and yelled for the stranger. He could not hear an answer, so he went into the night and yelled again. He finally heard a response and asked, “Where are you? And do you still need a push?” The stranger responded, “Right over here on the swing.”
There you are. Made you giggle just a bit, didn’t it? And I bet that just for one second—or even a millisecond—you forgot all about what was bothering you.
I think that laughter is, indeed, the best medicine. No maybe about it!
Favorite
Carrie Bonello
The word selected for this week is favorite. Hmmm so many choices: favorite activity/pastime, food, entertainer, sports team, friend, favorite place to spend time. The list is endless.
After giving it some thought I’m going to go with the first choice, favorite activity or pastime. I thoroughly enjoy spending time with strangers, ordinary people, detectives, lawyers, in small towns, or big cities, here or abroad. I can spend an afternoon completely enthralled with the story between the covers of a book.
Over the years I’ve spent time in the dust bowl just after the depression with Kristan Hannah in The Four Winds, and again recently in West With Giraffes. I loved visiting The Midnight Library where you can review your book of life, pull a new book off the shelf with different choices, and see how your life turned out. I spent a year in a hotel with A Gentleman in Moscow. I spent hours on the edge of my seat with both The Silent Patient and The Woman in Cabin 10.
I love visiting Appalachia with Jojo Moyes and her book The Giver of Stars, a story based on the women in the ‘30s delivering books on horseback to the people in the hill country. I’ve read many of Sharyn McCrumb’s books about Appalachia, most take place in the early 1900s but my husband and I both enjoyed St. Dale, the lighthearted book about a group of strangers on a bus tour of NASCAR race tracks.
I learned more about the Native American culture in The Night Watchman, and was delighted with Jesus in the water spout in The Trouble with Goats and Sheep.
I’ve probably spent more time than I should with Erin Hilderbrand on the beaches of Nantucket, and Liane Moriarty in Australia. But I just can’t resist the drama of real life.
While I was working it was difficult to find time to read, you know, that 8 to 5 thing is really 5 to 8 by the time you get ready in the morning put in the eight or nine hours working, get home, fix dinner and decide what to wear tomorrow and to do it all over again. Weekends were full of chores you didn’t get done all week, Monty and I were both ready to retire early.
When we retired one of the first things we did was visit our local library just a few blocks from our home. Browsing the stacks was such a treat. I remember thinking, so many books and I want to read them all. We’d spend so much time looking for books we’d often get a crick in our neck from tipping our heads to read the titles on the spines.
Now when someone mentions a book they enjoyed, I simply go to the library site, find the book, and click Reserve. The book magically appears on the Reserve Shelf under my name, no more stiff neck. While picking up my Reserved book I can’t help but browse the Lucky Day reads. There are treasures to be found there if you can read it in a week.
We are so happy the Robson Library has the same type of reserve system.