Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Things that make me giggle.
Have you ever seen or heard or thought of something that made you laugh and no one around thinks it's funny? It's usually something silly and not to complicated but it reaches in and touches you in that place in all of us that is silly and not too complicated.
I was once watching the Olympics with my friend Darren. (No, not another story about the Olympics. Ya know, they still haven't written me back about my ideas.) We were watching the hurdles and the runners were in the blocks. They had just done that thing where they go from the crouch to the "butt-in-the-air thing." Now, I know that some "professor of running" could give us a half dozen reasons for the "butt-in-the-air thing," but I wouldn't be surprised to find that it showed up somewhere around the time women's running caught on. Anyway, the runners, or at least their butts, rose into the air, and just then Darren burst out with "Smoke a cigarette!" You're thinking "Huh?" If you don't understand this, it refers to an old children's trick. You were going to have a race and you were the starter and you say "On your marks...get set...Smoke a cigarette!" and everybody false starts and it is very funny. No...no..believe me, when your eight years old, that is ass kickin' humor. So, at the moment of Olympic competition before us, the thought of an official not firing his pistol and instead saying "Smoke a cigarette" turned a key inside me and I almost died laughing.
I don't think for a second that I could convey that feeling to you or expect you to find it remotely funny but hopefully you have had such a moment in your life. If not, I can let you in on one more of mine in the hopes that you too will get a giggle. When I was a First Officer on the 737, I flew with a captain who had the same sense of humor as I did. We were always laughing. One time we were taxing from the gate in PHX to runway 7L. On the southbound taxiway, we needed to contact "South Ground". The captain had said something so funny that we were both breaking up with laughter. It got so bad that we were both unable to make a transmission on the radio. Thankfully, after a moment of just sitting there, the controller gave us further taxi instructions. I had recovered just enough to manage a "Roger" on the radio. When you're flying with someone like that, it's like you're not even at work.
Have you ever seen or heard or thought of something that made you laugh and no one around thinks it's funny? It's usually something silly and not to complicated but it reaches in and touches you in that place in all of us that is silly and not too complicated.
I was once watching the Olympics with my friend Darren. (No, not another story about the Olympics. Ya know, they still haven't written me back about my ideas.) We were watching the hurdles and the runners were in the blocks. They had just done that thing where they go from the crouch to the "butt-in-the-air thing." Now, I know that some "professor of running" could give us a half dozen reasons for the "butt-in-the-air thing," but I wouldn't be surprised to find that it showed up somewhere around the time women's running caught on. Anyway, the runners, or at least their butts, rose into the air, and just then Darren burst out with "Smoke a cigarette!" You're thinking "Huh?" If you don't understand this, it refers to an old children's trick. You were going to have a race and you were the starter and you say "On your marks...get set...Smoke a cigarette!" and everybody false starts and it is very funny. No...no..believe me, when your eight years old, that is ass kickin' humor. So, at the moment of Olympic competition before us, the thought of an official not firing his pistol and instead saying "Smoke a cigarette" turned a key inside me and I almost died laughing.
I don't think for a second that I could convey that feeling to you or expect you to find it remotely funny but hopefully you have had such a moment in your life. If not, I can let you in on one more of mine in the hopes that you too will get a giggle. When I was a First Officer on the 737, I flew with a captain who had the same sense of humor as I did. We were always laughing. One time we were taxing from the gate in PHX to runway 7L. On the southbound taxiway, we needed to contact "South Ground". The captain had said something so funny that we were both breaking up with laughter. It got so bad that we were both unable to make a transmission on the radio. Thankfully, after a moment of just sitting there, the controller gave us further taxi instructions. I had recovered just enough to manage a "Roger" on the radio. When you're flying with someone like that, it's like you're not even at work.
// posted by Chris @ Tuesday, November 30, 2004
