First, let me apologize for my disappearance over the last two weeks. Blog ideas have been rambling about in my brain, but life got in the way of my actually getting them from brain to keyboard. That and a cold from hell which left me blind on one side for several days... I blame that on my son.... So, please accept my apologies, (and his), and read on, MacDuff....
I have a very quirky sense of humor, and sometimes even the slightest things can make me laugh. For example, when I'm driving down the highway and see a huge sign advertising, "Donkeys For Sale," this really tickles my funny bone. Don't know why. But then, when months later, I am traveling down the same highway, and find the same sign, though this time with the 'S' missing, I REALLY have to guffaw. Whole new connotation here. "Donkeys For Ale." This instantly brings two thoughts to mind. The first, the donkey farmer (rancher?) must be really hurting for a good drink when he's willing to make such and upside-down trade. The second, the option that had me giggling, chuckling, and chortling for at least the next mile, was a twisted version of Orwell's Animal Farm, in which a congress of donkeys are sitting around huge plank tables and voting on the merits of ale. Nine out of ten were for it, (thus the sign). The last abstained from the vote as part of his twelve step program.
Then there was the day I walked into an elementary school classroom and happened upon a hand-made sign, created BY the teacher, which stated, "Classroom Schedual." Apparently, there would be two activities occurring simultaneously throughout the day. Just try and keep up. To me, this would only have been funnier had it read "Classroom Scheduel," in which we could have employed pistols at dawn in order to determine the duration of recess. Awesome! (If you think I am being too critical, let me remind you, she is TEACHING the elementary students basic math, grammar, and spelling- I would think the word "schedule" would be part of this. Maybe they hadn't come to that page yet....) (And further, in my defense, once I had gained control over my snickering, I very discreetly pointed out this mistake to the teacher, whose only response was, and I quote, "I was never very good at spelling." The sign remained until sometime later in the year, when I could no longer stand it, and I replaced it myself.)
Speaking of homemade signs, (and just a disclaimer here, if you KNOW you suck at spelling, then STOP making homemade signs- your magic marker does not have a spell check,) I recently saw another one that caused me some tittering. The sign, found mounted over the toilet in a doctor's office, read, "Please Do Not Flush Anything Down The Toilet But Tissure Paper, It Will Clog The Toilet." Tissure? What the heck is tissure?? Did I drive further south than I thought and land someplace where even the signs have accents? And before you hate me for the southern jokes, please remember I COULD stoop lower than that. After all, "tissure" is awfully close to "fissure" which opens up a WHOLE lotta crack jokes. And I didn't go there. I want credit.
Then there is the strip club in town which is famous (or should I say infamous?) for the weekly signs the 'exotic' dancers put out. It's one of those light up signs that you put the letters on, and every week or so they change the sign. One of my favorites was, "Highly Educated Intelligent Grils Will Dance For You." Of course, aside from the obvious fact that none of the clientele cares about whether or not these "grils" have a diploma, there is the oxymoron of the message itself, "intelligent grils." Evidently they employed a dictionary when it came to the big words, but overlooked the fact that they were going to struggle with the little words as well. Apparently, when it came time for the graduation tassels, they asked for two for a reason...
But my twisted sense of humor is not limited to spelling errors and signs. Restaurants bring out their own grand version of humor for me. Like the day I pulled up to the Burger King and saw a hearse parked right at the entrance. Immediately my brain chimed, "The king is dead! Long live the King!" (That was a horrible mascot anyway. Really, who didn't get nightmares from that scary-ass man? Whoever created the "King" has got to be out of a job, they are obviously not even bright enough to work on the line flipping burgers.)
Or, the time I saw the tractor (think farm tractor with engine removed) being hauled by a pair of horses, parked outside a local pizza delivery joint. Apparently, they had hired a new driver. You get your pizza in three hours or less or the next one's free.
More recently I entered a restaurant and saw, behind the counter, mounted directly above a pyramid of stacked chocolate syrup cans, a wooden carving of the face of Jesus, complete with crown of thorns. This struck me as completely hilarious, and I wasn't sure if I was being blasphemous, or the restaurant was. I had to wonder, was the restaurant endorsing their particular religious beliefs, or was the Lord endorsing this particular brand of chocolate syrup? What are you trying to say here? This syrup is heavenly? Even God loves chocolate milk? For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that we might have syrup? My husband simplified it this way; Jesus: Got milk? He makes me laugh.
My all time favorite, was the time I was at an antique store and found a baby's bassinet. Not the pretty little white woven, lacy little frou-frou number you are no doubt picturing in your head. No this bassinet was made out of wood and built identically to a crib but smaller. It had been hand painted to mimic a hideous hobo clown, complete with footboard feet with the toes sticking out of his shoes. The headboard was a giant clown's head with big oogey-boogey eyes looking down, no doubt at the poor little tot who was trying to sleep, but instead was given a world full of nightmares. Has NO one read Stephen King's It? WHO would do this to a poor defenseless baby? The kid had to have grown up to be a paranoid schizophrenic suffering from chronic insomnia. Now we know what happened to baby Jane... Anyway, I took pictures of the thing and sent them to my kids as a visual reminder, that no matter how bad my parenting might have been, I never forced them to sleep cradled in the arms of some menacing, misanthropic, leering jester.
And I thought the Burger King was scary...
LOL! Another great insight into the hilarity we call life!
ReplyDeleteClowns.....
ReplyDelete