WITBONES – "Ask A Humorist!" is a new advice column for the laughlorn by humorist B. Elwin Sherman. This time out, he addresses the problems of denture home repair, co-workers who can't stop laughing, and the formula for a long, healthy life:
DEAR WITBONES:
Last month while brushing my upper denture, it slipped out of my hand and broke in two pieces. I put it back together with Duct Tape, but it only lasts for a week or two, and then I have to start all over. What else can I do? Signed: NOT A DENTIST IN DAYTON
Dear NOT:
First off, your letter is suspect because of what everyone knows as a universal truth: Duct Tape will permanently fix anything.
Duct Tape saved the lives of the Apollo 13 astronauts. It was also used to firm-up a makeshift fender on a lunar rover. Duct Tape is, in fact, so revered by NASA that it is included in an operations manual as a means of dealing with an "acute psychosis emergency," I wish I was kidding. When a space station inhabitant flips his/her wig, Duct Tape is our American space program's preferred restraint mechanism.
Now, aren't you embarrassed? If Duct Tape can quell a zero gravity Cuckoo's Nest uprising, it can certainly fix your faux choppers. You must be doing something wrong, (applying it sticky-side up?) but that's beside the point.
Just because you CAN do something doesn't mean that you SHOULD. I'd begin by having my spouse immediately restrain me (and now you know how) before transporting me to the dentist. No one who fixes their dentures with Duct Tape should be walking around loose.
Thanks for WITBONING, and keep me posted.
DEAR WITBONES:
My problem is my co-worker. She's a wonderful person and a good employee, but she has the most obnoxious laugh. Not only is it loud and cackly, but she adds this little snort sound that makes me shudder, and sometimes she just laughs for no apparent reason. I work in the cubicle next to hers and I'm not sure how much longer I can take it. How do I tell her, without hurting her feelings, that she's making me crazy? Signed: HEADACHE IN HILLSBOROUGH
Dear HEADACHE:
Whenever I need an explanation for a good laugh, I turn to science, and here I'll hold with neurobiologist Robert R. Provine's assertion that "laughter is not about humor; it is about relationships between people." Professor Provine should know. He spent ten years researching "2000 cases of naturally occurring laughter." This is laughter not apparently provoked by anything funny. Personally, I think Bob missed his calling as a humor columnist.
Thus, according to his decade of observations, your co-worker is not laughing AT anyone, rather she's cackle-snorting because of her relationship, or lack of it, WITH someone (probably the person closest to her, cubicle-wise). I'd start there.
She is either seeking your attention or wants you to leave her alone. Her irritating, exaggerated hoots of laughter are compensatory mechanisms for either your advances or your lack of them. The less (or more) you ignore or rebuke her, the worse her hilarity outbreaks.
You need to stop doing, or not doing, whatever it is that's causing her to crack up "for no apparent reason." You could begin by wondering why you ever thought a humorist could help you with this. I'm still working on why I cry like a wailing hyena whenever the woman next to me at the office shows up for work.
Thanks for WITBONING, and keep me posted.
DEAR WITBONES:
I'm sick to death of being told how to live a long "healthy" life. Drink coffee? Don't drink coffee. Alcohol is good? Alcohol is bad. Jog? Don't jog. Eat meat? Don't eat meat. Is there one wholesome longevity "formula" that everyone can agree on? Signed: STILL ALIVE AND WELL IN WEST HAVEN
Dear STILL:
Yes, there is one size in the human condition that fits all – one person at a time. I once asked a woman on the occasion of her hundredth birthday your very question, i.e. what a person should do to reach the century mark. Her answer was delightfully simple: "Don't die, you damn fool."
She went on to add how we should all learn to busy ourselves living with what we have, not dying from what we don't. "That's why God made hearing aids, eyeglasses, false teeth and scooters." For the record, she was a vegetarian.
But, another gentleman who only passed away recently at the age of 112, was found to have long-subsisted on a diet of "sausages and waffles, with plenty of syrup." And, my own great-grandfather lived to the age of 101. He once said: "I smoked like a chimney, drank like a fish, and philandered whenever I could." My grandfather, himself making it into his nonagenarian years, used to joke that his father's lifestyle "probably killed him just like that."
I knew yet another elder character who lived alone well into his nineties. He shunned human company, opting instead for a motley menagerie of cats and dogs, and for the last ten years of his life, he never washed. In fact, he dropped dead on the day visiting nurses gave him a sponge bath.
I'd suggest mixing and matching all of the above, until you find the life that suits you.
Meanwhile, don't swim in shark tanks.
Thanks for WITBONING, and keep me posted.
Copyright 2008 by B. Elwin Sherman. All rights reserved. Questions for WITBONES - "Ask A Humorist!" may be submitted to: WITBONES, c/o B. Elwin Sherman, P.O. Box 360, Bethlehem, NH, 03574. Or, you may e-mail Elwin via the WITBONES website.
DEAR WITBONES:
Last month while brushing my upper denture, it slipped out of my hand and broke in two pieces. I put it back together with Duct Tape, but it only lasts for a week or two, and then I have to start all over. What else can I do? Signed: NOT A DENTIST IN DAYTON
Dear NOT:
First off, your letter is suspect because of what everyone knows as a universal truth: Duct Tape will permanently fix anything.
Duct Tape saved the lives of the Apollo 13 astronauts. It was also used to firm-up a makeshift fender on a lunar rover. Duct Tape is, in fact, so revered by NASA that it is included in an operations manual as a means of dealing with an "acute psychosis emergency," I wish I was kidding. When a space station inhabitant flips his/her wig, Duct Tape is our American space program's preferred restraint mechanism.
Now, aren't you embarrassed? If Duct Tape can quell a zero gravity Cuckoo's Nest uprising, it can certainly fix your faux choppers. You must be doing something wrong, (applying it sticky-side up?) but that's beside the point.
Just because you CAN do something doesn't mean that you SHOULD. I'd begin by having my spouse immediately restrain me (and now you know how) before transporting me to the dentist. No one who fixes their dentures with Duct Tape should be walking around loose.
Thanks for WITBONING, and keep me posted.
DEAR WITBONES:
My problem is my co-worker. She's a wonderful person and a good employee, but she has the most obnoxious laugh. Not only is it loud and cackly, but she adds this little snort sound that makes me shudder, and sometimes she just laughs for no apparent reason. I work in the cubicle next to hers and I'm not sure how much longer I can take it. How do I tell her, without hurting her feelings, that she's making me crazy? Signed: HEADACHE IN HILLSBOROUGH
Dear HEADACHE:
Whenever I need an explanation for a good laugh, I turn to science, and here I'll hold with neurobiologist Robert R. Provine's assertion that "laughter is not about humor; it is about relationships between people." Professor Provine should know. He spent ten years researching "2000 cases of naturally occurring laughter." This is laughter not apparently provoked by anything funny. Personally, I think Bob missed his calling as a humor columnist.
Thus, according to his decade of observations, your co-worker is not laughing AT anyone, rather she's cackle-snorting because of her relationship, or lack of it, WITH someone (probably the person closest to her, cubicle-wise). I'd start there.
She is either seeking your attention or wants you to leave her alone. Her irritating, exaggerated hoots of laughter are compensatory mechanisms for either your advances or your lack of them. The less (or more) you ignore or rebuke her, the worse her hilarity outbreaks.
You need to stop doing, or not doing, whatever it is that's causing her to crack up "for no apparent reason." You could begin by wondering why you ever thought a humorist could help you with this. I'm still working on why I cry like a wailing hyena whenever the woman next to me at the office shows up for work.
Thanks for WITBONING, and keep me posted.
DEAR WITBONES:
I'm sick to death of being told how to live a long "healthy" life. Drink coffee? Don't drink coffee. Alcohol is good? Alcohol is bad. Jog? Don't jog. Eat meat? Don't eat meat. Is there one wholesome longevity "formula" that everyone can agree on? Signed: STILL ALIVE AND WELL IN WEST HAVEN
Dear STILL:
Yes, there is one size in the human condition that fits all – one person at a time. I once asked a woman on the occasion of her hundredth birthday your very question, i.e. what a person should do to reach the century mark. Her answer was delightfully simple: "Don't die, you damn fool."
She went on to add how we should all learn to busy ourselves living with what we have, not dying from what we don't. "That's why God made hearing aids, eyeglasses, false teeth and scooters." For the record, she was a vegetarian.
But, another gentleman who only passed away recently at the age of 112, was found to have long-subsisted on a diet of "sausages and waffles, with plenty of syrup." And, my own great-grandfather lived to the age of 101. He once said: "I smoked like a chimney, drank like a fish, and philandered whenever I could." My grandfather, himself making it into his nonagenarian years, used to joke that his father's lifestyle "probably killed him just like that."
I knew yet another elder character who lived alone well into his nineties. He shunned human company, opting instead for a motley menagerie of cats and dogs, and for the last ten years of his life, he never washed. In fact, he dropped dead on the day visiting nurses gave him a sponge bath.
I'd suggest mixing and matching all of the above, until you find the life that suits you.
Meanwhile, don't swim in shark tanks.
Thanks for WITBONING, and keep me posted.
Copyright 2008 by B. Elwin Sherman. All rights reserved. Questions for WITBONES - "Ask A Humorist!" may be submitted to: WITBONES, c/o B. Elwin Sherman, P.O. Box 360, Bethlehem, NH, 03574. Or, you may e-mail Elwin via the WITBONES website.
