December 2017 – HUMOR IS NO FUN UNLESS YOU LAUGH

Curriculum Vitae

In the Blackfriars area of London, just South of St. Paul’s, stands a tall sculpture called “The Seven Ages of Man”. It invites contemplation for two reasons. It reminds us, first, of the fact that youth does not last forever, that we cannot escape getting old. The second remarkable fact is that Richard Kindersley, the sculptor, has made no effort to cheer us up: all seven portraits he has piled up into a column, from baby to nonagenarian, show the most serious faces possible. I believe that he was saying that life is tough, nothing to laugh about. Or, to use contemporary street language, that life sucks.

Good Lord, if we were all that pessimistic? What would we do for fun? On the other hand, I do find voices that echo those sentiments. In Southern Germany, for example, where I spent my childhood years they have a saying that goes somewhat like this: “All my life I work like a maniac and in the end? There I lie, only my stiff legs sticking out”. I do not expect any of my readers to be fluent in German, but in case any do read German I must give you the German dialect version to be fair, for the humor of the original does not come through in translation. Here it is: “Dei Lebtag schaffscht wie a Dackel und am End schtreckscht die Baa naus”.

Not all Germans, by the way, see life in such harsh terms. The more bourgeois version of the above goes like this: “From the cradle to the shroud there are forms one must fill out”.

We are all free to elaborate on that. I could try to imitate Ogden Nash and suggest: “From desperately crying newly born to one slowly but perceptibly wilting and visibly worn.” Or if you are in a hurry, “From womb to tomb”.

Due to a temporary condition requiring rehabilitation in a place established for that purpose I had a chance to observe the many specially designed pieces of equipment that occupational therapists use to help people “relearn” to get in and out of bed or deep chairs, or to sit down on the toilet and, more difficult, to get up from same. The latter task is facilitated by a specially designed restroom which a large sign on the door advertises as the Training Toilet.

And there goes, we might say, the last shred of dignity and decorum as we now sum up the ages of man: “From baby’s toilet training we recoiled at, to weakening old folks’ rehab’s training toilet.”

The Wreath

In neighborhoods of single family homes many if not most front doors sport a wreath of some sort. Double doors have two wreaths, for visual balance. Where I grew up, on the other hand, a wreath was something you ordered from the florist when somebody died. A wreath was something funereal that ended up in the cemetery decorating a grave. Certainly not anybody’s front door. So I was curious what the meaning of the ubiquitous front door wreath might be.

I have asked around but so far I have not found anybody who had a better explanation than “my parents always had a wreath on the door”. I could make a few guesses. What if the roundness of the wreath — no beginning, no end — symbolizes the home owner’s wish for permanence, the “home sweet home” idea. In the past this certainly made sense. The house remained in the family, generation after generation. When you consider, however, how common it now is to sell and buy real estate, and also how mobile the population has become, passing things on to the next generation is more of a fiction than a reality.

In Antiquity winners of sports events and emperors (being also winners of sorts) wore a laurel wreath on their heads to symbolized victory. “Hail to you, wearing the winner’s wreath”, goes the text of a German hymn. It is unlikely that this might be the meaning of the common door wreath unless the owners of the house celebrate the paying off of the mortgage, which certainly qualifies as a victory.

There is considerable variety among wreaths. Some are made from real sticks, branches, flowers, and berries. Most, I am afraid, from more durable and less wilt-prone plastic. The plastic ones in particular, if they were meant to propitiate any gods, will not do. The gods would know the difference. So whom are we kidding? Not anyone, actually. I have concluded that hanging out a wreath is just something we do. It does not mean anything beyond that. It is done by religious people as well as by more secularist folks.

Except right now, in the Christmas season, when all the regular wreaths are replaced by advent or christmas wreaths, i.e. wreaths made from green branches of deciduous trees. Suddenly a bit of religious or spiritual sentiment is injected into the practice. The evergreen material of which the wreath is made now may signify faithful endurance, no flagging or weakening, come summer or winter. The round shape of the wreath stands for life. Perhaps once around for this life, and then round and round for eternity, rather a stern warning for the faithful.

But the green christmas wreaths, as well as their plastic stand-ins, are also enthusiastically hung out by heathens who decidedly are in the majority. How else can one explain the prevalence in my neighborhood of inflatable Snoopies, snowmen, and reindeer on peoples’ front lawns and the apparently complete absence of manger scenes and shepherds carrying lambs.

And there are not many wise men in evidence, either. But I will let that go.

Larry’s Mother

If you are hard of hearing and wear a hearing aid as I do, or if you have a Dad or Grandfather who falls into that category, you may know how fast ordinary conversations can turn into comedies of error. We, my wife and I, meet some one. His name is Jim. Days later she says: “I called Tim. I liked him. Didn’t you?” My poor brain is already overtaxed because (a) I try to be responsive, to react to what she just said., but (b) I have only one phoneme to work with, “IMM”. Imm who? The J, the T, and the H did not come through and I would not know who Tim is, anyway, because I never heard of him and I already forgot the encounter. No wonder I have a blank look on my face. On good days my wife will explain. On bad days when we are in a hurry she will just say: “Oh, forget it”.

Sometimes, however, she too forgets the name of a person we both met and both of us then try to remember. We both draw a blank. A week later she suddenly, without preamble, bursts out: “Tim, his name was Tim!” Obviously this was on her mind. It was not on mine. I only vaguely remember what this was about. In such cases it is best to keep quiet and let it pass.

Many words sound alike to me. “Mary”, out of context, could sound like “scary”. A statement such as “That was Mary” comes through to me as “That was scary”. My question: “What was?” produces a blank stare on the part of my companion. At that point I had no reason to suspect that I had not heard right. She, of course, had just seen Mary walking by. Without context I was left with just the sounds produced in my inner ear by the wave frequencies that come through. But explanations don’t go far. Normal hearing people tend to listen skeptically to such discourses, vaguely suspecting us freaks of putting on a show.

Sometimes it is only one word that I do not get. “The other day when we makanashnoo…” is a phrase I could not possibly understand. I know there are no Makanashnoos around here so she could not have possibly said that. In such cases I never hesitate to ask.

This brings me to Larry’s mother, the more complicated case of a sentence of which I understood every word and of which I still could not make sense. The sentence I heard was “Her son is Larry”. I drew a blank on “Larry” and recognized “Her” only as a possessive pronoun, a kind of word that should not lead a sentence, anyway. It is amazing how fast the brain can search its store of memories. To be safe I mentally scrolled past all kinds of names and situations, things that we talked about recently, people that we met, anything that might jogg my memory as to who that “Her” may be. Nothing came up and within a split second I had convinced myself that I had heard wrong. The signal was turning green, anyway. I had to move on. Forget Larrry.

Of course I still did not know what I should have heard. In this instance, the answer to the puzzle was quite simple. My wife had only commented that “the sun is glary”. Ridi Paligliaccio sordo. It ain’t easy.