Canned Laughter

What a day I had yesterday!  My morning started at 1:00 am with a cat fight under my bedroom window.  After rescuing El Gato Gordo I went back to sleep until 3:00 am when one of the rods in my closet collapsed, tearing the brackets from the wall.  But the fun didn’t end there!  At 5:00am the neighbor’s dog and his buddies decided to have a party in our garbage.  When I woke at 6:00am to get the kids ready for school, I was not in the best frame of mind.

Luckily, I’d decided to stop patronizing Starbucks and put the money saved into the vacation kitty.  Only nine more months before I get to enjoy that decision!  This morning, I nearly cracked.

After the daily chores, I spent a significant amount of time cleaning up an unnecessary mess someone had made that was making my elderly parents miserable.  I was feeling quite chuffed telling Mum & Dad that I’d taken care of everything and they had nothing to worry about.  Then the MESS MAKER walked in the door and began yelling at me for interfering.  I left in a hurry.

In the car going to work I began to brood.  Valiantly I tried to regain my Zen.   I prayed for graciousness and peace.  But all I could see in the road in front of me was Mess Maker and how good Mess Maker would look covered in tire tracks.

In the end, I snapped out of it by remembering gracious words from my childhood.  Was it the words of St. Francis of Assisi?  Perhaps the comfort of the 23rd Psalm?  No, it was the wisdom of Steve Martin from 1977.  Listen:

Be courteous, kind and forgiving,
Be gentle and peaceful each day,
Be warm and human and grateful,
And have a good thing to say.

Be thoughtful and trustful and childlike,
Be witty and happy and wise,
Be honest and love all your neighbors,
Be obsequious, purple, and clairvoyant.

Be pompous, obese, and eat cactus,
Be dull, and boring, and omnipresent,
Criticize things you don’t know about,
Be oblong and have your knees removed.

Be tasteless, rude, and offensive,
Live in a swamp and be three dimensional,
Put a live chicken in your underwear,
Get all excited and go to a yawning festival.

(Ladies only)
Be tasteless, rude, and offensive,
(Now the men)
Live in a swamp and be three dimensional,
(Everybody)
Put a live chicken in your underwear,
Go into a closet and suck eggs.

-Steve Martin