Finding Funny

[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!

Melanie Faith

Creative Writing Teacher, Essayist & Poet.

Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.

The Society of Professional Journalists

In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.

I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.

Maxine Greene

Philosopher and Education Scholar

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From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere.

Dr. Seuss

I wish I was funny.

I love to laugh, though I don’t do it enough. I love jokes, though I don’t tell jokes very well. I love to be around funny people. They just seem to make everything less heavy. There is a connection between funny and smart, and I like smart. There is a pace and tone to funny that I never get quite right. I see it in others, like a puppy looking out through a cage at a animal shelter begging to be adopted. Why won’t funny adopt me? There is a kindness to things that are truly funny that invites people to laugh together, with one another. That kind of funny builds things.

Laughter is a salve for the spirit.

As part of the Whole Life Challenge, one of the “lifestyle habits” was laughter. To get the daily “lifestyle points,” we had to find a occasion to laugh everyday. Simple. Right? Well, my main source for laughter was pet videos on YouTube. They were a sure fire laugh. You know the ones? Goats singing a Taylor Swift song. Cats in bathtubs. Laughter also includes John Oliver, our own pets’ antics, (some acts on) America’s Got Talent, and talking with certain friends. (You know who you are.) Focusing on laughter that week made me realize how much I love funny things.

We must find funny right now.

What if there are humor muscles? Muscles that strengthen and build with use, and the same principles apply to humor muscles that apply to the rest of our body. They must be trained to optimally perform. If they are not exercised, they become unable to respond. If this line of thought holds, if we don’t laugh, gradually we will become unable to laugh. Not laughing would be worse than gargling rocks.

These times are serious. Laughter might be medicine.

Find funny everyday. I am not saying just rush out to the next Melissa McCarthy movie, though she often makes me laugh so hard my stomach hurts. I am not not saying you have to join an improv class, though if you want to talk about boot camp for laughter muscles that just might be it. I am not saying dig out your old Eddie Murphy “Delirious” album, though just writing that makes me want ice cream. I am saying find funny. Notice it. Feel it. Appreciate it. Share it.