Laugh or Cry ~ Always Choices

Perhaps you read the part of this BLOG " that introduces me to you readers. And you saw where I call myself an "Old Hippie"? Well, it is true, I am indeed a Baby boomer, and my youth was spent during those turbulent times of social revolution and chaotic change in America. Times both vilified and glorified, forever captured in the music and films of the era, and fondly remembered by many of us. Those times are in part responsible for the man I have become. And I firmly believe that the time of my youth played a major role in the development of my humor. Warped as it may be, my sense of humor has been a salvation to me, warding off the insanity that surly would have consumed me otherwise. You may not believe that humor can prevent something as devastating as insanity. You may ask, how is this possible?

Living in those times taught me many things. I learned to view the world from a different perspective, see things a different way, and to relish the little things life offers. But the most important thing I learned is that we have choices. You, and I, the guy next to you, all of us have choices. And one of THE MOST IMPORTANT choices we have is the choice to either laugh at something, or to cry about it. And I discovered that I generally prefer to laugh. Crying is a "downer"! If you start your day crying about something, most of the time your day is ruined. But, if you laugh, things just seem to get better and better as the day goes on.

Now, you have to understand, where I live there are no malls. If I want to go to a mall, I have to drive more than 100 miles. I live in "Small Town USA", that rural and picturesque part of America. What passes for shopping here is a visit to the local "Wally World". You know the chain of which I speak, but it is the only place in town to shop. Last week I made my weekly pilgrimage there to get groceries and a few things I needed for the house. And the first thing I noticed was the garden department. There were three large trucks in front unloading flowers, vegetables and garden supplies by the ton. A sure sign in my part of the country that Spring is here!

Living where I do means getting all four seasons. We get snow in the Winter, not much, but the temperatures get below freezing, and stay there for long stretches. Any way, I did the shopping that I needed to do, and raced home. I wanted to clean my porch and inventory my hanging baskets. I spent some time planning what I would put in them, maybe something bright and colorful. I was stoked! And, three days I was back in town to look for something to put in those baskets. As I drove in, I saw a large area that was roped off where bags of mulch and fertilizer were stacked high, decorative bark and planter bricks were massed and ready for gardeners to buy. I saw roll away racks filled with bedding plants and vegetables in front of the garden shop. I was ready, I was motivated and I was anxious to get started.

But going into the garden shop, my enthusiasm was destroyed. Half of the new plants were dead , and most of the remaining plants were withering. The temperatures at night had done them under. All of my plans for the next two days evaporated. I knew instantly that I would have to wait a few more weeks to plant my hanging baskets. Now, I don't claim to be a genius, I am not overly educated, I have never been a farmer and I have NEVER associated myself with the local "Garden Society", but I do know that buying dead plants is not the brightest of ideas. Now, what to do? Should I cry about this? This injustice to the flora that I was witness to? Should I get depressed about my plans being ruined? I had to make a choice! And the choice was easy.

While I stood there, looking at death surrounding me, I began to notice the other shoppers. And then I began to watch them. Some of them were actually buying those half dead, and really, truly dead plants! One little lady had three flats (there are 24 plants in a flat) of pansies in her cart, and every one of the plants looked dead or terminal. She was buying them! And there was a couple searching through the tomatoes and vegetables. Their cart was filled with plants incapable of being saved by the eminent of horticulturists in the world! And the thought came to me, I wasn't really in the garden shop of "Wally World", I was in an open air insane asylum! For surly, these people were crazy! Who says that everything in the "Twilight Zone" is from the imagination? I was there, standing and watching people pay money for dead plants. And I laughed, and I am still laughing about it.

Where I live, you can't purchase any alcoholic beverages. It is in what is called a dry county. Yes America, there are such things still in existence, especially here in the "Bible Belt". Now, I like beer. I also like wine, whiskey and a few other things. After all, I was a Chef, and I need wine to cook with. I've never made a beef stock without adding red wine to it, and I have never made a marinara sauce without wine. Tell me, how can you make a whiskey sauce for bread pudding without whiskey? And because I live in a dry county, I am forced to make an 80 mile drive, round trip, to purchase such beverages. At the cost of gas today, that adds a bit to the price I have to pay for a beer, so when I go, I usually but quite a bit simply because it is a pain to have to spend the time and money to on such an errand. The liquor store I go to is just a few hundred yards across the county line, and it always has customers there.

Personally, I am not a religious man, but my wife is. She likes to attend church, and since she doesn't drive, I go with her. It is no problem for me. The church we attend is not large by big city standards, but every Sunday, there are a couple hundred people who attend. Before church begins, and after the service ends, my wife and I talk with many of the others who are there. Many of them are nice people. But they all have one thing in common, and that is the determination to keep our county dry!

From time to time, some enterprising person tries to build a "Private Club" in town, one that has an associated bar. And, every time this happened, the cry from the pulpit is sounded. The members of the congregation are urged to attend a city council or county commissioners meeting and demand that this NOT BE ALLOWED! Not just from the church we attend, but the cry is heard from every pulpit in the county! And the people obey, they answer the call from God to stop this great evil from falling upon them. They show up in mass at the meeting of the commissioners and the councilmen, and they ALWAYS succeed in thwarting the planned venture. Hooray for the righteous! I went to one of these meetings just to see what would happen.

People stood up and ranted of the evils associated with hard drink, they quoted scripture and shouted insults at those poor folks silly enough to have applied for the license. They prophesied gloom for the residents of their fair community if such utter evil were to be allowed. Then the vote was taken, the applied for license denied, and the people all went home safe and secure that they had done the work of the righteous. Then, the following day, I made the trip to the liquor store across the county line. And there they were! Surprise, surprise, there they were. The same people I talk with at church, the same people that worked themselves into a frenzy at the meeting the night before, there they were. Not picketing the liquor store, not shouting their scripture, no, no, no. These same people were buying BEER, WINE and that EVIL WHISKEY! What choice did I have. I laughed. I laughed until my side hurt. Hypocrisy can be a very funny thing, don't you think?

Seriously folks, the world around us is filled with hypocrisy. It is overflowing with injustice. Recently, there was a possibility that our government would shut down because Congress could not agree upon a budget. Government workers faced the possibility lo LOOSING their paychecks because the ones responsible couldn't agree. But those responsible for the mess would continue to get paid. Oh yes, those congressmen would have continued to get paid if the government had shut down. The way I see it, they should be the FIRST ones to loose their paychecks. Creating a budget is their responsibility, but a Secretary in some government office would have been the one to suffer. You just have to laugh at the high-handedness of some people. Look around you, and find the humor in our world. But, you also have to see the problems. The problems are still there, and you can't ignore them. Just because they are funny doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to fix them.