My Sense of Humor...

I love to laugh. I have laughed in church services, doctor’s offices, on busses, in cars and horror of horrors…even in a funeral home. If someone says something that strikes my funny bone, it’s hard for me to stop laughing. And in fact, I’ve even started to cry as a result of trying to keep from laughing. Throughout my life, I have also orchestrated some excellent practical jokes on friends. Here is a brief list:

• Tree Tax: I helped my brother pull a practical joke on a friend of his by creating fake city documents explaining the new “Tree Tax” and the cost for each taxpayer based on a convoluted mathematical formula. The particular friend was a landscaper, and had many trees in his yard at the time. His father-in-law was a city council member, so we also sent the same papers to the councilman, as well as to the friend’s mother and father. That way, we reasoned, he would call his parents and complain about the new tax, only to learn that they, too, had received the information about it. We also thought that by doing that, he would be less likely to believe the new tax to be a prank.

• Financial Aid: I created a “letter” seeking a monetary donation, from then-Soviet leader Boris Yeltsin, to a friend of mine. I used a stamp from England, that had been cancelled, and put it on the front of an envelope. I also copied some Cyrillic letters onto the front of the envelope. It “looked” Russian. The letter “arrived” at her apartment when I did. But I serepticiously dropped it to the floor, and turned it face down. That way, she would think it was something that fell from the day’s mail. I did this prank during a time when the Soviet Union was in dire, financial straits, and was obtaining help money from various nations around the world. I laughed a lot when my friend Barb walked into her kitchen while I was in the living room. I heard her say, “Hmmm…what is this?” I heard her open the envelope. She read the letter. She said, “Whaaat?! What is this?!” A short while later, she came into the living room, laughing.

• Pizza: Growing up, my brother and I lived across the street from a family with a Collie named King. It didn’t take a lot of imagination for us, then, to call the local pizza place (prior to caller id technology) and simply order a pizza for “King.” We watched by the front window for the arrival of the pizza delivery guy. Yes, he arrived! We wondered, would he go inside? Yes, he did! But would he come out without the pizza? No, he did not! He came back outside with the pizza, and we laughed hilariously at our prank. We just couldn’t get over the funny thought of the pizza guy saying, “Pizza…for King.” At one point during our mischief, I turned on the living room light. Of course, my brother panicked and got mad, thinking we pranksters would be found out as we could be seen standing at the window…haha… so out the lights went. We figured that at least the pizza place workers got to eat some pizza that night.

• You're In the News: From time to time I’ll copy and paste a news story into an e-mail and add a made up comment by a friend, as if she were a part of the big news story. I recently did that (again, to my friend Barb) and later learned that she sent the funny article all around the state of Ohio, and even to the Ohio Democratic Party! Oh, my… and everyone had a good laugh, I hear.