Laughter

The most wasted of all days

is one without laughter.

~e.e. cummings

It sounds so cliche, but laughter really is the best medicine! There is something about having a good laugh that can make you forget about the world around you. It can make you feel as if nothing else matters except the fact that your stomach aches from using muscles you didn't even know existed or keeping just enough composure so as not to pee your pants in mid-laughter. This is how I felt this evening!

My sister gave Rob and I tickets to Fat Fish Blue in Perrysburg. For years, Toledo's only comedy club was Connextions done on Heatherdowns. And down that club was....down the toilet! In more ways than one! So about once a year we'd venture out with friends to see an act. It's a very exciting thing, to have a new comedy club and apparently I'm not the only one who thinks so because this evening it was standing room only at FFB. And it's Sunday night! Rob and I will more certainly be out to FFB's more than once a year. We were actually trying to plan our next trip on our way home!

And by coincidence, Rob and I had just been seated and were getting cozy when Keith Bechtel, an old acquaintance walked in and was seated right next to us. That made for a fun night! Comedy and laughter is always better with friends!

"A good, real, unrestrained, hearty laugh is a sort of glorified

internal massage, performed rapidly and automatically.

It manipulates and revitalizes corners and unexplored crannies

of the system that are unresponsive to most other exercise methods. "

~Author unknown, from an editorial in New York Tribune, quoted in Quotations for Special Occasions by Maud van Buren

While at FFB, they made lots of announcements (sidenote: they make announcements at clubs because they know signs/ads aren't effective, people need to hear what's going on). One of those announcements: an upcoming Stand-up/improve class. It's how to do stand-up or as Chili described "how to better know yourself" and be able to laugh at yourself. I really want to take it. Hear me out! This course would be beneficial to me in many ways but here are just a couple: 1) When the audience that I'm giving a message to starts to fade away, I could bust out some one liners and actually pull it off. Or I could just plan for them, make the whole thing a lot more interesting and no one would be fading away anyways.

2) I could be traveling now doing speaking engagements and sharing the gospel, however, I don't. Why? Because I feel I have nothing really special to share...and there are many things I'm just not ready to share...why? because I find it hard to laugh at myself! But imagine if I could do stand-up effectively and then on top of that share my testimony! What a new way I never thought of to fulfil my calling!

3) I don't know...but I think I'm pretty funny! Not all the time...but when I am funny...I'm funny! I can come up with some off-the-wall one liners and just some funny stuff! I think this course would help me find that inside myself and I think it would help me to get more comfortable because people wouldn't just stare at me blindly as I speak, they would be laughing!

So now I just have to come up with $199.00 to take the course!