Where Humor took me…
My partner & I met in Los Angeles, a cosmopolitan city when it comes to self-care, ablutions, and personal style, but he is from a small town in the Midwest.
He is a naturally handsome person from a classical perspective. Tall, strong features, warm smile, and - at the time I met him - long, curly hair that he wore in a sloppy bun.
He didn’t do much with his hair, and it worked.
For that reason, he was given the nickname E-rakeem Noah, a combination of his childhood nickname - Keem - and the basketball player Joakim Noah in honor of his loose hair bun.
About a year into our relationship, still living in separate apartments, he asked if I would cut his hair.
I come from a beauty business family. All of my haircuts were done by my grandfather, a hair dresser.
This doesn’t mean I inherited the gene.
I set up a chair in the middle of my living room in front of a mirror. Had him sit down. Put a towel around his shoulders and began gingerly trimming his locks.
The difference between before and after was barely perceptible.
When we traveled through Australia for 3 months, his hair grew even longer. We returned to LA, and he wanted it all off. A friend recommended a salon in West Hollywood called Mino.
Mino, the namesake, has been in business since 1982. A veteran stylist.
Being from a small town, my partner doesn’t have the "This is what I want” way of talking to a barber or hairdresser. He asked me to communicate it for him.
“He would like it short but natural. Nothing chiseled.”
Mino started in on my partner’s hair. I sat behind them in a chair, looking at my partner in the reflection of the mirror in front of him. Mino talked and told stories without missing a snip.
Then he stopped and said, “What do you think?”
My partner looked at me like, Help!
He had the Business in the Front / Party in the Back cut.
Before I could protest, Mino burst out laughing.
“I am kidding! It’s a mullet! I am kidding!”
Mino is Israeli and has an accent in English.
“I am keeding!”
We all laughed, as he continued to finish the haircut to perfection.
Now, whenever I say something as a joke, I say:
“I am keeding! It’s a mullet! I am keeding!”
(Only my partner gets it!)
Which brings me to the humor of friendships.
I’m proud to say I have a lot of funny friends.
This is not a coincidence.
Humor is the glue.
Even in my earliest memories, laughter attracted me to people. From my ability to make them laugh or their ability to make me laugh, which of course is a give & take of laughter, I’ve bonded with funny people.
I never discriminated between the kid whose dad was on the board of Goodyear or the kid whose mom worked on the campus maintenance crew.
If there was humor to be had, we were tight.
There are studies that support the positive influence of humor on our mental & physical health. I know that any situation deemed as serious - not life-threatening, but formal - already gets a smile on my face.
During the “lockdown”, I posted:
I’m very funny… around people.
The first gathering I went to was a yoga retreat in the Algarve. It seemed that as much as yoga, we all were craving laughter. And I didn’t disappoint.
I mined every person there for their sense of humor. Some were quick to the call. Others took a few days to relax into it, but ultimately we were all smiling & hugging saying goodbye.
Historically, I was more often the receiver of humor, but as I’ve aged, I’ve become the friend who makes others laugh.
It feels so important to keep that instinct sharp.
Humor is a dish best served unexpectedly.
This post is not meant to be funny.
It just wouldn’t work.
The point is to honor my friends & family who - thankfully - are ready to give & receive humor under mundane & extraordinary circumstances.
YOUR TURN: Where does HUMOR take you? You don’t have to be funny, although it never hurts. Maybe you - like me - need that physical contraction of stomach muscles along with a loss of breath and tears rolling down your cheeks to really feel human!
Share your story of HUMOR in 150 - 200 words.
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I had to laugh. Cato puppy and Mac dog had followed me up the trail behind our house and looked around to see or hear why I’d stopped. They love to race through the woods on the mountain where we live in the Blue Ridge. But it wasn’t the dogs’ antics that had caused my mirth but the awesome beauty of the view. Earlier in the day, I’d blown leaves from around the house, pathways, and ditches along our driveway and down the mountain road. But now more leaves had fallen onto the trail— “as if I hadn’t done anything.” I sighed to Keith. “Nature abhors a void,” he said. I chuckled at his humor and mine. In my humanity, I wanted perfection and thought I could compete with God. Hubris. “True,” I said as the leaves swirled around outside. They don’t call this season “fall” for nothing.
My Dad majored in journalism in college and worked most of his life in marketing/advertising at large corporations, so language was his gig. He was forever correcting our English - syntax, pronunciation (he'd worked at a radio station for a while right out of college), and grammar - so that all four of his kids became over-conscious of language and its proper (Dad's definition, of course) usage. But he also loved puns and plays on words. He would start a pun train and delight in our jumping aboard. Something like a string of puns on the word "deli." "You're such a ham." "Cheese, just stop!" "No, we're on a roll." Like Tamara making instant friends when she finds a sense of humor, I can bond with anyone who enjoys puns and can make a pun train with me. Someone once said that puns are the lowest form of humor. I disagree. They are a bonding form of humor and one of the things I miss most about my Dad.