Blessed2Bless by Steve Klusmeyer
Timing the Humor
by Karen Rinehart
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The following is a column I wrote last year at this time. My column was due to appear in the newspaper on the first anniversary of the September 11th attacks on America. I was in a quandary -- do I ignore it and write about some dangerous laundry mission on which I'd recently embarked? Do I try to be all serious and sentimental? Would anybody besides me even care what I wrote? In the end, I came up with this:
Timing The Humor
September 11th, 2002"Find your niche and stick with it." Encouraged my mentor, journalist Nancy McAlister. She'd made a successful career for herself covering the television and entertainment industry. How would I narrow it down? I loved a good sappy chick story as much as the next housewife. Fiction? My husband always says my imagination is my own worst enemy.
Although good at research and reporting the facts, I disliked it. The thought of straight reporting without the benefit of sitting in close proximity to Matt Laurer made me yawn. I'd successfully written marketing and promotional materials but, well, double yawn.
Humor. That was my gift, whether I wanted it or not. Sometimes, believe me, I don't. The "gift' can be unwrapped at some real inappropriate moments (office functions, solemn church services, parent teacher conferences, in the middle of disciplining my children or trying to win a fight with my husband).
Just today I was lecturing my daughter on respecting the somewhat sacred territory known as my bedroom, when she started to walk away. "Get back here young lady! Don't you dare walk away when I am talking to you. Now put these pillows back on my bed blah blah blah blah."
By the second blah I had to turn around so she wouldn't see the corners of my mouth turning up. The absurdity and parental predictability of what I said hit me at the most inopportune time. I hate it when that happens. How is any respectable parent supposed to chew out their kids when they can't keep a straight face?
I have three older brothers who make me look like a drone and a bore. I wish you could sit around the dinner table with my brothers. We were raised teasing, laughing, telling jokes, pulling pranks and imitating our teachers (many of whom were my dad's former students which made it even funnier for four geeky teens). To this day, when we start to fall out of our chairs and spit water through the laughter, my parents still attempt to stifle us, except they're too consumed with laughter themselves.
At times we've found comfort in our ability to find humor in the most warped or horrendous situations. (Like the way my grandfather's Chicago burial resembled a scene from the Godfather, with my little Italian grandmother attempting to throw herself onto the lowered coffin and the cousins in black holding her back.) Sometimes I think we are all just a bunch of goofballs and our friends and families just put up with us because we're cute.
This past week, I pondered if humor can be realized in every difficult situation life hands us. The answer, I think, is, no. Sometimes anger, used properly, is the better medicine. Can humor still heal? Of course, but not the whole wound. That's where faith, friends, family, love and time step in. Besides- "For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven……a time to weep, a time to laugh…" says the ancient scripture. How true today: September 11, 2002.
There are some who are tired of all the reliving and revisiting of tragedy. Let them know when and where the next bomb will drop and they're satisfied. Tell them when the new sitcom season starts. They have arrived at the time to laugh. Their time to mourn is done; it is their time to dance.
There are those who need, physically, spiritually and emotionally, to revisit the events of that day. Still others ask, like on a recent radio show, "Is anyone out there still as upset as I am? What happened to the anger? To justice?" To them, it is still a time for war.
A friend of mine, quietly, out of the blue, in the middle of a boutique, asked me, "Is anyone else crying a lot lately? I just can't seem to stop crying."
"Oh girlfriend" I softly chuckled, "come on over to my house; you'll be in good company. I've got the tears and the tissues." And every television special ever aired recorded, an Internet file full of photos and video clips, discs full of both sappy-missing you and patriotic songs. I'll show you photographs from a birthday trip to NYC. I tucked them inside my 9/11 coffee table books.
Hand me the phone. We'll call my mom's favorite student, Jennifer. She was married in Quantico, VA on Memorial Day, 2001. Her husband, a 28 year old Marine pilot, was deployed to Pakistan on Pearl Harbor Day, 2001. She spent her first married Christmas home alone in the states, anticipating the birth of their first child, due July 4th , 2002. The military officers showed up on her doorstep January 9th. A few months later, with the grace, strength and humor of a woman beyond her years, the young widow asked my mother, "Considering all these patriotic dates, do you think I should name our son Sam?"
Jennifer ended up naming him after his daddy. Last week, in South Carolina, she had Dan, Jr. christened. Jennifer is an inspiration and a life lesson to me. Yes, there is a time for everything.
If I believe everything I read in those women's magazines, laughter is the best medicine. It's supposedly nature's way of lowering my risk of heart attacks. Today I'll take an aspirin instead. Tomorrow I'll go back to laughing; won't you join me?
Copyright © 2002-2003, Karen Rinehart
Used by permission.
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