Sense of Humour

I can’t imagine living life without a sense of humour. I actually don’t think anyone can really accomplish that – I mean, look around you! Just looking at your relatives or coworkers will tell you that God has a sense of humour and he passed it on to us!

I had this epiphany one night walking back to my apartment after a late class at University.

It was about a fifteen minute walk, straight down the avenue along wide grassy boulevards. For some reason, I was in a terrible mood. As I was striding angrily down the street, I was talking to myself, arguing and talking back - to myself. Before you leap to any conclusions, I was one of the poor university students, unable to access any of those recreational substances. Nope, I had enough trouble with Reality without adding anything to the mix.

I was passing a few of the family homes along the street, noticing the flicker of a TV through a picture window. Suddenly, I had a sort of out of body experience (remember, no leaping). I had a look from inside the house, watching a student trudging mightily past, waving his arms about, mouth moving a mile a minute. MP3’s weren’t around yet, so it wasn’t like said student was singing along to something.

He (I) looked ridiculous.

I actually stopped dead in my tracks and started to laugh. I mean a rip-roaring, full-out belly laugh. It just about brought me to my knees. If someone was looking out at me at this point, I’m sure they thought that pharmaceuticals must have been involved. Damn hippie/punk/weird-o/kid, that’s what higher learning gets you...

From then on it was, and still is, a mission of mine to see the humour around me. It started back at the apartment with the telephone. I sat up for another hour or so, thinking up new ways to answer the phone. Some of the best were “House of Socks, Argyle speaking” or “House of Toast, Ryley here”. Rye-ly, get it? Rye bread? Never mind.

We had about seven or eight of these answers that we used on a rotating basis. The best response I had was when I answered “RCMP Drug Division, Sgt. Davis”. There was an excruciatingly long pause on the other end, then a tentative voice came on and said “Is Mark there?” “Yeah, hang on”. Apparently, Mark had a few friends that may have dabbled here and there. Nervous lads.

We also had a party once or twice. Yeah, I know, who’d have thought that a couple of twenty-year-olds at university would have a party. That’s us, the trend setters. Anyway, one of the best bashes we had was in the middle of winter. We decided to have a hot tub party, in our fourth floor, student apartment. We made sure everyone knew to bring their swimsuits because we were going to buy a hot tub and put it on our balcony.

The night of the party saw temperatures down to -20 degrees or so. We filled our tub up on the balcony and awaited our guests. One of the first to arrive was Mike, a friend that was always ready for anything. We had the drapes to the balcony closed halfway and you could see the steam rising outside. Mike could not believe it! He ran over to the sliding glass doors, whipped the drapes aside and looked over to the end of the balcony to see how big the tub was. Then he looked down to the floor of the balcony to see a six inch deep kiddie pool filled with hot water.

Darned if he didn’t actually get into his suit and have a bit of a soak. I knew I was in the right place.