My life is funny. Is everyone's life funny?

[quirky]

I couldn't help thinking of the forum today when I took my grandma to Applebee's for lunch. We like the place. She either gets the fried chicken salad or the stir fry...and I usually have a steak with the garlic mashed potatoes and steamed veggies. I guess that makes me a "meat and potatoes" girl.

I had skipped breakfast, so I was starving, but we were seated immediately and pretty soon this male waiter who's nametag says, "Jim" (I'm NOT making this up) tentatively approaches us and says..."Hi, I'm Jim...and Stephanie's really your waitress and I'm just a trainee here...but she sent me over to see if I could maybe get you an appetizer...or a drink? Shots?" I say, "I think grandma could use a shot, but she'd never down it in one...so just water thanks."

"With lemon?"

"Yes, that would be nice."

So...off goes Jim...and he comes back with the water and says (very sweetly), "So do you need a little more time, or did you come in knowing exactly what you want to order?"

"Just a few minutes maybe."

At this point, I notice that Stephanie is kind of treating him brusquely, she strikes me as a bit of a virago and I wonder if she's just a harsh trainer, or she's peeved because she got stuck with the new guy for the day.

Grandma can't find stir fry on the menu. They've changed it to something like, " Terriyaki bowl" and so she orders it and I get the steak.

Jim says, "How would you like that cooked?"

"Rare, please."

OK...the whole Applebee's experience becomes surreal at this point. I'm already completely enamored with the new guy because he's so nervously endearing and he says, "The code requires me to advise you that steak should be cooked to at least (I start tuning out because I am so stunned that I'm getting the rare steak advisory notice) ...

This is me looking at Jim:



A laugh is just bubbling at the bottom of my throat. Because I've NEVER had this said at Applebee's before...and I say, "When someone comes in and asks to sit in the smoking section...do you have to issue a similar warning?" By now I am seriously laughing.

Jim says, "'No, because it's on the side of the pack. The only thing on the steak is grill marks."

I laugh harder, "I'll bet the little warning will be stamped on the steaks soon."

So...Jim does a lovely job taking the order and the meal is good. I have another giggle when grandma comments about my garlic mashed potatoes. Mashed with the skin on and she says, "I hate when they are too lazy to peel the potatoes." I say, "All the nutrition is in the skin..." and we are momentarily distracted when harridan trainer asks Jim audibly if he's checked on us yet. I assure her everything's fine and he's done a great job.

Finally, when he brought the bill I said, "If you'll humor me for a second. I just have to ask. How do you eat YOUR steaks?"

He looks down at his feet for a second and says, "Rare."

I said, "I knew it! A good vet could save it, right?"

I left a really big tip, but Stephanie came and got the money. I hope she shared.

[mav]

.....and you thought you would never meet Jim. Hah! Did you sputter out your pre-prepared learnt-by-rote one line speech ? Why on earth was he wearing a name-tag ? The smile would have sufficed, don't you think ? Did you poke his ribs ? What was he wearing ? How close were you ? Did any molecules trade places ? Did you get a piece of his shirt ? Did he autograph your butt ? ......

Is my life funny ? I dont think it is. But we can make things funny, right? You have a great sense of humor and I find myself discovering humor in places where I usually don't. Like today, for a particularly humorless incident I went "Hello, Helloo, Hellooo" like you do and it felt funny and good. I have not laughed so much ever as I have on JCO.
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[lammy]

.....and you thought you would never meet Jim. Hah! Did you sputter out your pre-prepared learnt-by-rote one line speech ? Why on earth was he wearing a name-tag ? The smile would have sufficed, don't you think ? Did you poke his ribs ? What was he wearing ? How close were you ? Did any molecules trade places ? Did you get a piece of his shirt ? Did he autograph your butt ? ......

Is my life funny ? I dont think it is. But we can make things funny, right? You have a great sense of humor and I find myself discovering humor in places where I usually don't. Like today, for a particularly humorless incident I went "Hello, Helloo, Hellooo" like you do and it felt funny and good. I have not laughed so much ever as I have on JCO.
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LOL..did he autograph her BUTT? Would he and if so-I'd like an autograph on my BUTT,BOOBS and my ***** if he's kind enough!

[quirky]

.....and you thought you would never meet Jim.

Needless to say...different one. This one was GREAT, though. Also...I thought, "This guy's going to think I'm flirting with him." So I looked at his ringer finger and there was a ring there.

But we can make things funny, right?

Trust me when I say it's not only a possibility, but a neccessity. It's one of the only things of which I am absolutely certain.

[fluffy]

here's a funny story...........but i hope i don't offend anyone.....

well. one of my pupils was on a behaviour chart because he was a little bugger and he came to me asking for a picture of Jesus to stick on the side of the chart for inspiration......ok i thought .....so i went to the internet and craftily got the optical illusion picture.....the one where you stare at it for 30 seconds then shut your eyes and in your head you'll see Jesus........
So i gave it to him..........he looked at it and said 'i asked for a pic of Jesus'..........so i told him to look at it for the 30 seconds then close his eyes................Well, what ensued was very amusing..............he thought he'd had a conversion.....he was running around telling people he'd seen Jesus..............
However the funniest point came after lunch when we had a cue of kids with a secret...........when asked they all declared they were Christians because they'd seen Jesus............Joe had been going around trying to 'convert' everyone..............i think he thought it was an epiphany....

fluffy

[quirky]

[fluffy]

HALLELUGHIA!!!!(sp??)..................he was running around telling everyone 'it's a miracle'..............so we had to gently explain that it was an optical illusion..........However he's taken 'the lord' into his heart and is reading the Bible.........unfortunately he says he can't get past Genesis......

fluffy

[quirky]

Ok...JT...tell me about how your life is funny.

[quirky]

While I'm waiting for JT to construct her "Ruining my hair is suffering for my art" story. Let me tell you about last night.

Sometimes being a Jim Carrey fan means that you get a lot of ribbing from cerebral friends. Also, my family rolls their eyes. Not that I'm incessantly talking about it. But I have mentioned that I enjoy this site and I think Jim Carrey is a genius. So, I decided to institute "Project Majestic" to get them to understand. As I said, I'm SURE that my grandma saw this before, but she had forgotten (she's 97, she's entitled to not remember EVERY movie she's seen). Anyway, it was a very cold and blustery night, so perfect for a movie.

We started watching the video at around 9pm and she was hooked from go! I knew she would be, since it deals peripherally about WWII. Three of my grandma's brothers (all HER mother's male children) went off to fight in WWII at the same time. She was already married then and she said that my great-grandmother's hair went from dark brown to grey in the space of the two weeks after they all left. Miraculously, all three survived the war...so the star flag with the three navy stars was never changed. She explained to me that during WW's I and II, homes that contained service members were given the small flags to hang outside, with the number of stars indicating the number of family members fighting in the war. If you lost a soldier/s, the military changed the star or stars from navy blue to gold.

Having now read the accounts about the filming of "The Majestic" and knowing that Jim had an acting coach with him, I was paying particular attention to his performance. But also, I kept stealing looks at my grandmother to try to gauge her reaction. It wasn't hard. She was sitting there with her hands folded together and a look of wistful joy on her face.

So, of course I was very tickled that she was so enthralled. She really is a beautiful woman. So, we were sitting all cozily (the heat has kicked on because the temperature outside had dropped so much) basking in majestic comfort. If I had taken a pic of her enjoying the movie, it would have been an intrusion....but here she is around the time (or a few years before) the movie was set.



The moment in "The Majestic" that really gets me is Mr. Trimble's death scene. (Not to be confused with Martin Landau's demise because the man is still alive. ) No one who has ever lost a parent can watch that scene without feeling the sadness and internally screaming, "Don't tell him you're not Luke!"

You know how I mentioned earlier that it was cold outside? Well...here in the country, an interesting thing happens when there's no corn in the fields and it gets chilly. The mice come inside...so...yes, only in my funny world am I watching the death scene, completely reeled in and feeling all the intensity of emotion, when "Snap!" Off goes one of the mousetraps we have set in the pantry. I look at grandma and she looks at me and I say, "I think we got a mouse." She says. "Yeah, I heard that, too."



I can't take the pathos. We finish watching the scene knowing that Mr. Trimble is dead and a mouse has bit it in the pantry. I had to pause the video and go look because I can't stand the idea of a mouse just being trapped in the trap by a limb or something and suffering. So I open the pantry door and ... the trap is sprung, but the mouse got away.



The Majestic is a great movie. Grandma was up 'till MIDNIGHT to finish it. I asked at around 11 if she wanted me to stop it and watch the rest in the morning, but she said, "Oh no!"

After it was over, she said...and I quote, "I really LOVED it."

"Is it on DVD or VHS (grandma has gone tech) because if it's VHS, we will let ******* (her remaining son) watch it tomorrow!"

So far "Project Majestic" has gone exactly as planned.

Muaahhahahaha!

[Janel]

Thanks for sharing the pic of your grandma--she is beautiful! I am also tickled (pink, in fact!) that she was so taken with Majestic! There are several scenes that are tear-jerkers because of the time in history--so much sacrifice was made--many families paid such a high price. Makes me think of our men and women overseas now....

[Clemmy]

So, I decided to institute "Project Majestic" to get them to understand.

Quirky,

I like your strategy to change people's opinion. It seems easier to implement and more effective than Jim's, by the way:

"I would send anybody who didn't like The Majestic to the fiery pit of hell. Then I'd start a new Utopian society made out of special material so I could cave the critics' heads in and they'd pop right back out" -- said Jim Carrey when asked what he would do if he had God's power for a week.

[Janel]

oops !! I forgot this is a "my life is funny" thread...ok...another mouse story...
We had a family of mice take up residence under our water heater under our kitchen cabinets. They would typically climb the pipes under the sink and fall into the trash can and then I would just take them out to the dumpster. One evening, however, one lad got very brave and ran across the kitchen floor. I got one of my sticky traps out determined to catch the stinker before my mini-schnauzer did...
I sat back down on the couch to talk to my husband (now ex) and all of a sudden that stupid mouse ran across the back of the couch behind my husbands head!! We were floored that he was being so brave!! We moved couches in an effort to snag the critter but no success so we sat down again (me with glue trap still in hand).
Just minutes later, I looked up at the ceiling--the mouse had shimmied up the drapes and was tight-rope walking across the valance across the top of the sliding glass door! I jumped up and ran to the door--at the end of the valance was a bank of upper cabinets. Just under them was the lower cabinets and a hole I had seen a mouse disappear into before--I knew this was where our Mission Impossible Mouse was headed.....
I stood underneath the valance and placed the glue trap on the floor--right where I was sure the mouse would drop....
3, 2, 1....drop it did--right on the trap....but in a split second, my mini-schnauzer (Samson ), who had been next to me waiting, pounced on the mouse---head comes up and there, stuck to his poor bearded face is the entire thing--glue trap, mouse and all!!! I was terrified that the mouse would bite him so I RIPPED the glue trap off his face!!!!!
We laughed for days about that--it was like right out of the movie Mouse Trap, or something!!!!
Hey, and I'm sorry if anyone has issues with glue traps...

[quirky]

"I would send anybody who didn't like The Majestic to the fiery pit of hell. Then I'd start a new Utopian society made out of special material so I could cave the critics' heads in and they'd pop right back out" -- said Jim Carrey when asked what he would do if he had God's power for a week.

Ok, that's funny even out of context. Seriously, we KNOW he has a sense of humor. I do, too.

Janel, on the subject of mice: In Europe we had a mystery. We came home one night and found the jar OFF of the peanut butter and little paw marks in it. So we were thinkin' what the heck kind of mouse can get the lid OFF the jar of peanut butter? We never saw them, but my dad got mousetraps set and we'd wake up and they'd all be stripped and sprung...but no mice. We were wondering if maybe they got into some cache of steroids someplace. Mighty mice, for real.

One night we came home, opened the door and saw:



Looks like something out of a Disney movie, right? But it has to go. Because it is seriously pesky. The Europeans told us we had to use poison...which worked, but let me tell you a dead dormouse in the wall really smells.

The dormouse was the second funniest thing I ever witnessed in the foyer. (Which was pretty large and had a tile floor that was a pain to buff.) The funniest, and I will never EVER forget the image...was when I came home from school, got off the bus...walked home (it was a hot day)...stuck the skeleton key in the door, opened it and there was my MOTHER in just a bra and underwear, with two towels under her feet, skating across the floor on them.

I said, "Mom...I am SO GLAD I did not bring a friend home from school today."

[Janel]

Speaking of mothers--back when self-tanners weren't as sophisticated as they are today, my mom would put some on her legs before we would go on vacation--remember the orange streaks known as "QT"? Oh, man it was ugly!!! My sister and I would tease her about it and she would always act clueless--"what is on my legs? There's nothing on my legs..."

Okay, so years later, when I became a mom (and had developed a conscience about cancer and shriveling up in the sun), the self-tanners were a LOT better but you still had to wait a little while before dressing so they could dry and not mess up your clothes. Thankfully, no one ever walked in on me like you did your mom, Quirky.........I would close all the blinds, lock the doors (while my two kids were at school) and vacuum in the nude while my tanning lotion dried!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok....is that like totally way too much information or what!! When I told my 15 year old daughter that I used to do that, she rolled her eyes (as only teenaged girls can do) and said, "Please don't ever tell anyone that again!" Hey, if I can't embarrass my teens, what good is being a mom?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Janel]

Oh, come on, gang!!! It's been quite awhile since my post about teenaged girls rolling their eyes...I thought for sure I would get some flak from the younger cool crowd about my motherly comment!! lol