Well I had to have an endoscopic (upper gi) procedure done this yesterday. It really doesn't bother me, because the meds they use to knock you out are so gentle. My first experience as a child involved ether - which smells (and tastes - yuck, yuck, yuck) exactly like those Easter egg dyes that come in the little glass bottles. Later I went through some sodium pentathol, and the following 2 decades of various anesthesia.
Anyhow...
So there I am, on the gurney, IV in, Oxygen in, clamps and wire harnesses on, propped into the perfect position with the one nurse poised to insert the mouthpiece, and the anesthesiologist poised to stick the sleepy juice into the iv .... when the fire alarm goes off.
Yeeeeaaaaaahhhhhh.
Now, I don't know what sort of face I made, but the doctor found the situation practically hysterical. He could not stop laughing.
I said... ya know, I'd like to wait a few minutes to be sure this is a false alarm.
He said, ah don't worry about it.
I said, but....but.... and with that they strapped the mouthpiece on and knocked me out.
Afterwards, he was still laughing, and said he would have thrown a water blanket over me had there been a real fire. Oh yeah, I'm still laughing about that one.
Seriously though, life IS funny.
There is never a bad moment that isn't sweetened with the absurd, the bizarre, or the silly.
When my mom died last year, we had a gathering at her house. I'm certain that some of her friends went away scratching their heads because we (her children) were fairly cheerful, partly because we had each other. She taught us to see the humor amidst the horror, and I hope they knew her well enough to see that in us. And her death was such a freak accident - combined with the fact that her only brother had died the day before her accident.... what do you DO with something like that?
In one of Stephen King's books (Rose Madder?) the bad guy eventually goes really over the edge, and at some point uses a sock puppet to inform the victim that they are in trouble. The sock puppet says, "OH OH". My sister and I laughed over that one for a long time, till our sides hurt. Now when something goes horribly wrong, one of us will hold up our hand as if it were a sock puppet, and make it say "OH OH".
I'm not going to list bad things that happen. Here's hoping that you are one of the people who can find the humor in everyday. I'm so grateful that I am.
