I could taste the damn drops in my throat. Maybe I was imagining it. While I sat with my eyes closed, she read out from the check list on any medical issues I have. Thankfully, it was one "no" after another.
"You didn't ask me whether I am pregnant" I interrupted her.
"It is coming" she replied with a chuckle.
She continued to read off the list, and I realized it was alphabetical.
"So, are you pregnant?" she asked. We had reached "P."
"Maybe" I said.
She laughed even louder.
At the end of it all, she remarked, "with so many "no" you will be an easy case."
"Will I get a candy bar then? A lollipop at least?"
More laughter.
Back when I was young, and whenever father brought home a copy of Readers Digest I would rush to read the humor sections first. As a kid, I don't recall being funny at all, but I loved humor. Especially humor in daily life. Not pranks. I hate pranks because that humor is at somebody else's expense. I like only harmless humor.
I suppose this humor in daily life is also why I naturally feel at home here in the US. There is a great deal of humor in small talk that makes transactions that much more painless, human, and lively. I rarely ever attempt this when traveling in India though--my idea of humor never seems to work there.
The optometrist asked me to perform the tasks and wrote me a prescription for new glasses. When we were done, the assistant directed me to take the paperwork to the front desk.
"Anything else?" she asked.
"Yes, a cappuccino, please."
"I too would like to have one" she laughed.
I handed the paper at the front desk. "The doctor said I can get a free cappuccino here" I told her with a straight face.
"Ha!" was her response with a big smile.
It is almost as if we had all rehearsed our lines. There was no pause in anybody's delivery of those lines. Even if we have heard them before, we participate in this give-and-take without rolling our eyeballs way up. Well, mine were dilated anyway!
Next door was the optician, where I had already selected the frame before getting my eyes dilated. Sometimes I am smart that way!
"I like this frame on you" she said.
"Of course you would say that when you want to sell it" I replied.
She laughed. "There are more expensive frames that I want to sell, but this one is you."
"Given the cost of the lenses, you may as well advertise as free frames."
She laughed again.
I told her the same line that I use in class with students: "don't encourage me by laughing. It will make things worse."
She laughed again.
"I think we men are programmed to be funny" I told her. "Well, we try."
I was actually channeling Lynn Redgrave's sarcastic lines from an awesome movie, Gods and Monsters:
Oh, men! Always pulling legs. Everything is comedy. Oh, how very amusing. How marvelously droll.Comedy for men, and drama for women, eh!
7 comments:
Ahh a sense of humour goes a long way to enliven the day. Not everybody, even men, are blessed that way. Did you notice that the other person in the banter in your entire post was all women. You have a way with the fair ladies, my friend.
By the way, if your pupils are dilated, can I drive you back home ??
Most of my interactions are with the service sector of the economy, which is dominated by women. Now, if I were a corporate head honcho, I suppose a lot of my time will be wasted in the company of men ... muahahahaha ;)
Yes, humor is a wonderful grease to ease the friction of life. But then sometimes it gets annoying when students, waiters, fellow-passengers, and the like engage in too much of that, which sucks the life out of me!
Man, I wish I could have that same experience when I visit the optometrist! I am terrible at small talk and couldn't serve up a piece of intelligible wit if my life depended on it! You're lucky!
I love Readers Digest and even today jump to the humor section first :) - yay to the similarity :)!
Sooper smart on picking the frame first - I am due for an eye exam soon and shall do the same :).
Can't live without humor - hubby talks very less which I find hard to deal with sometimes, but thankfully he's got a great sense of humor ;). We were just having an argument and he said "don't make a mole out of a mountain" and we both burst into laughter :D
Been a long time since I read RD ... Do they even now have those 'humor in uniform' and 'humor in daily life' kinds of section???
All the courses I teach are nothing but variations of "small talk 101" ;)
Humor in Uniform, Life like that used to be my favorite sections in RD too. Loved your style of humor and possible that is what makes life in US amazing and the absence of it is a cause of lot of problems here back in India. I don't know why for people in India it is too difficult to take joke on them. I don't know if you read about a restaurant which was vandalized because it made a joke on government policy on taxing the A/c restaurants.
Serious? A restaurant vandalized because of a joke on tax? hmmmmmm.... bizarre, indeed! where was this???
Post a Comment