Being vulnerable

The other day I was talking to a friend of mine and asked, “So honestly, what else do I need to do with this blog, aside from hiring someone to completely reformat it so that a person doesn’t have to scroll up after they click to read the stuff on the sidebar.”

Without skipping a beat she said: You need more dirty jokes, Lin.

Huh? What do you mean, more. Are there ANY dirty jokes here?

Yeah.

Could be.

So I delved deep into my old AOL account (153 messages) and looked for Sarelle’s jokes.

My friend Sarelle is an amazing food artist and very religious, yet she has this cache of jokes, generally Jewish, many about being elderly, all pretty funny.

But I have to be in the mood, you know? I hate it when someone says to me, “Did Sarelle send you that joke about the. . .Wasn’t it funny?” and I didn’t find it funny, and feel like I have to say that I did just so I won’t have to answer the next question, “Well, why didn't you think it was funny?”

Anyway, this morning I saw her, the joke-miester herself in the parking lot at Jewel. She was loading dozens of bags of groceries into the back of her 20-seater van, straddling a puddle of milk. I guess she’d dropped her milk, but I didn’t ask. I pretended it was normal to be straddling a big puddle of milk.

When women see each other they big hugs, so I gave her a big hug and told her a quick story about S.

Remember S? We dropped G.D., short for Genius Doc, in favor of S, Such a Good Doc, then yesterday he told me preferred C.D., short for Cranky Doc. But I don’t want him confused with a plastic disk. He's much more than a plastic disk.

When I rolled over this morning S was singing. I don’t know if this was hip hop or rock or what, but I know the song he was singing and I HATE this song.

S has a classical music background so he doesn't even realize how bad it is. That the song is bad is just my opinion, probably a minority opinion, as usual. And the only reason he has this deriviative hip hop song droning endlessly through his hi-jacked brain is that Rac, one of my talented daughters-in-law asked him to transpose some music for a show she's working on for her sister Meira.

Rac, btw, came up with the Jason Fortuny handle, Cyberspace Super Hero.

Anyway, I don't care what Meira says, I hate this song:

Everybody Loves the Fool.

Remember it?

Everybody loves a fool. Ain’t no exception to the rule. Maybe factual may be cruel, sometiiiiime, but everybody loves the fool.

As much as I hate the tune, the words actually prove my bias that there’s no rush to get better in therapy because our friends love us when we’re screwed up, when we play the fool, do stupid things. When you’re a psychological wreck it makes everyone else feel less screwed up. More normal.

See? Being a mess serves a valuable societal purpose.

I’ve said it before, people love us vulnerable so take your time getting your act together, and no, this is not about me making more money at your expense while you luxuriate in therapy. Sheesh.

On the other hand, why do other people get to feel good at your expense when you're vulnerable? Let THEM be screwed up for a change. Get working on changing those negative thoughts, raising that serotonin!

Anyway, back to the story.

S. was getting dressed to go to the synagogue (shul) and he thought it would be funny to give that horrible song to ME.

He sings, “Everybody goes to shul. I'm no exception to the rule.”

“No, no, no!” I cry out. “Do NOT give me that song!”

But it was too late.

So when I saw Sarelle in the parking lot I told her that story and gave her the song, and now you all have it, too. It should be out of my head. I'm cured. And I know. You hate me.

To make up for doing this to you on this Thanksgiving Day I’m giving you one of my friend’s jokes. Maybe it will inspire her to find some better dirty jokes that are not really dirty, or really funny, but gently distract us from what we should be doing, like cooking for Thanksgiving. Don’t expect me to do the joke thing very often, though. I get panic attacks just signing onto that AOL account.

Oh, and Sarelle? Tell me again the one that you know I like, the one about the old guy who got married and sees his friend the next day, and the friend asks, So how did it go, did you, you know? And he says, Sure we did, we. . .

How’s it go again?

Anyway, this was all I could find that didn’t make me want to throw up.

A man standing in line at a check out counter of a grocery store was very surprised when a very attractive woman behind him said,"Hello!" Her face was beaming.

He gave her that "who are you look," and couldn't remember ever having seen her before.

Then, noticing his look, she figured she had made a mistake and apologized. "Look," she said "I'm really sorry but when I first saw you, I thought you were the father of one of my children," and walked out of the store.

The guy was dumbfounded and thought to himself, "What the hell is the world coming to? Here is an attractive woman who can't keep track of who fathers her children!"

Then he got a little panicky. "I don't remember her," he thought but, MAYBE..during one of the wild parties he had been to when he was in college, perhaps he did father her child!

He ran from the store and caught her in the parking lot and asked, "Are you the girl I met at a party in college and then we got really drunk and had that wild crazy night in the back of dorm?"

"No", she said with a horrified look on her face. "I'm your son's Hebrew teacher!"

Groan, groan, groan.

Ah, it wasn’t that bad. I could have told you the one about the hypnotist.