There are moments in life when the only reasonable response is laughter. I learned this lesson pretty early on. Humor has saved me from experiencing pain, public humiliation, grief, and even facing life-threatening situations. Without doubt, laughter has defined me as a person.
Growing up on a farm in Minnesota, in a family with four children, a mother who loved practical jokes and a father with a dry sense of humor, laughter was our white noise. Some of my earliest memories involve sitting around the dinner table everyone telling stories of their day, the funnier the better.
I was clueless that humor wasn’t a part of everyone’s life. Daddy used to tell the story about when I was three years old, at dinner one evening, he unceremoniously plopped a pile of mashed potatoes on my plate, which I guess I didn’t want, and I said “Dam you, Daddy!” And everyone at the table stopped what they were doing, and my father said “What did you just say, Cindy?” And I demurely replied “Thank you, Daddy.” Of course, everyone at the table cracked up. And so it began. Laughter became my drug of choice.
I didn’t realize when I started school that life wasn’t just about creating your own world (let’s call that Life with Linda) or jumping out and scaring people (Life with Mother) so I continued on my merry way, creating my own, often humorous, story as I went.
I made two good friends right away when I started first grade: Jane and Eileen – and we always spent our recess time together. Not long after my first few weeks attending school, I was starting to get bored and figured it was time to stir the pot. One afternoon recess, deep into fall, with the leaves from the maple and oak trees covering the ground, the three of us were walking along the fence that encircled the playground. I found a cockle burr plant, drying up, and the burrs were ripe for picking. Hmmm. So, of course, I picked a bunch of them, stuck them into a small ball, and headed back towards the school. (Did it hurt? Sure, it hurt! But that’s the price you pay for a good, practical joke.)
Jane and Eileen were saying “Cindy what are you going to do with that burr ball?” (Obviously they didn’t know me very well yet or they wouldn’t have asked, and they certainly wouldn’t have followed me.)I sneaked up, real quiet, behind Sister Bernadette (our first-grade teacher) and stuck the burr on her tail. Well, I called it a tail. The nuns wore the traditional black and white nun outfit which included a long, veil connected to their headdress, and flowed down their back. It was cool. Kind of like a cape. (But, trust me, she couldn’t fly.)Once the burr was secure, I walked away. Mission accomplished.
Jane and Eileen were both red in the face, and almost in tears. I thought it was funny too, but not that funny! I am not sure how the burr ball was spotted, or removed, but this little prank just got my juices flowing. The next day when we were taking our mandatory lavatory break, the three of us, and several others, were in the girls bathroom and I showed Jane and Eileen how you could wet a paper towel, squeeze out the water, add a few shots of soap, make it into a ball, and then throw it at the ceiling and it would stick! Now how cool was that?
Of course, they got all red in the face, and looked like they would cry (again, not THAT funny!) as I proceeded to prepare three or four soap balls and stick them on the ceiling. Unfortunately, we had been in the bathroom too long, and Sister Bernadette came in to see what was taking so long.
“What’s going on in here?”she asked, sternly,
We all stood straight, arms at our sides, looking innocent. Well I was looking innocent, those two were now actually crying. Go figure. As she stood looking at us, the soap balls started to fall: plop, plop, plop. Right on the floor in front of Sister. Needless to say, that time I got caught and had to stay in from recess for two whole days. (Totally worth it.)
The best part of these two incidents was the dinner time story telling. They both got a pretty good laugh. But I had just begun my Catholic school adventures. There would be many more to come, some planned, some not planned, but in the long run they were all worth the effort.
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