Feeds:

Archive for the ‘writing humor’ Category

We had friends over for dinner last night, two couples who hadn’t met each other before.  It’s always a bit of a gamble to put strangers together in a social situation.  Sometimes my attempts have resulted in lackluster meals, ones where despite the effort made to create an enjoyable meal and lively conversation, the mix of personalities doesn’t seem to work.  But I needn’t have worried; from the moment our friends arrived and were introduced to each other, the evening was punctuated by laughter.  Not the polite kind either, but the hearty involuntary laughter of people enjoying one another.  The kind of laughter I heard described earlier in the day a cognitive neuroscientist, Sophie Scott, in an excerpt from her March 2015 Ted Talk, “Why We Laugh.” 

Laughter is, Scott points out, behaviorally contagious.  “When you’re smilin’,” Louie Armstrong sang, “the whole world smiles with you.”  We humans are thirty times more likely to laugh when we are in the company of others, but much more likely to laugh among people we know and like.

But there’s more to laughter than a good “ha, ha!”  Laughter, as Norman Cousins told us in his 1979 book, Anatomy of an Illness, is good medicine.   We manage our stress better, deal with difficult situations more effectively, and, through shared laughter, build closer social relationships.  Long before Cousins wrote, however, Mark Twain wrote about the power of laughter:  “The human race has only one really effective weapon and that’s laughter,” he said.  “The moment it arises, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.”

Now cancer is certainly no laughing matter, yet if you walk by the cancer center conference rooms where I lead the “Writing through Cancer” workshops,  you’re bound to hear laughter.  In fact, during some mornings, laughter occurs at least as often as tears.  Counterintuitive perhaps, but as Sophie Scott remarked in her Ted Talk, shared laughter is a way of saying, “if we can laugh together, we can get through this.”

I remembered the final months of my father’s life before he died from lung cancer.  My father loved to laugh, and he loved a good, humorous story.  Why should his death be marked by weeping for his loss?  He made his three children promise his funeral would not be defined by sorrow.   “I want you to throw me a party after I die,” he said.  “Invite all my friends, serve Jack Daniels and tell funny stories.”  We did just as he wanted.  His laughter was what we loved most about him, and sharing those humorous memories was exactly how he wanted to be remembered at his death.  Perhaps he knew that our shared laughter would help to alleviate our sorrow.

Jeannette Moninger, writing in the Winter 2015 issue of CURE, states that many hospitals across America now offer laughter programs for cancer patients.  Moninger describes a few:  At North Kansas City Hospital, patients can watch funny movies…Duke Medicine offers a Laugh Mobile, a rolling cart from which adult patients in oncology wards can check out humorous books and silly items like whoopee cushions and rubber chickens.  And the Big Apple Circus Clown Care Program sends…clowns to 16 children’s hospitals nationwide to help put smiles on the faces of ill children…

Even as far back as the 13th century, surgeons used humor to distract patients from the agony of painful medical procedures. Even then, they were onto something, as many research studies have borne out.  Laugh, and not only the world laughs too, but Moninger writes, your body releases endorphins, the “feel good hormones that function as the body’s natural painkillers,” the same hormones that create the “runner’s high.”  Endorphins also decrease the body’s levels of cortisol, the hormone associated with chronic stress.  Cortisol has a number of negative effects on our bodies, compromising our immune system, tensing up our muscles, elevating blood pressure—all of which laughter helps to counteract.

when you are raised with the gift of laughter, as I was, it can’t stay suppressed forever. It’s too powerful. Thank goodness for that. I eventually could see bits of “ha-ha” in my own life. Certainly not in the cancer, but in the mind-blowing circumstances that suddenly consumed my life. And laughing at parts of those experiences made me feel a little more alive.  The funniest part of it all was that the more I allowed myself to laugh, the more therapeutic my tears became.  (“Jim Higley, “Finding Humor in the Midst of Cancer,” Coping with Cancer Magazine, March/April 2012)

We all need a little laughter in our lives, no matter if we’re dealing with cancer, an over-busy or stressful life, the loss of loved ones, or simply sharing time with friends as we did last night over dinner.  We need to laugh just as much as sometimes, we need to cry.  And laughter is best when we share it with others.

 

From over the wall I could hear the laughter of women   

in a foreign tongue, in the sun-rinsed air of the city…   

 

…One spoke and the others rang like bells, oh so witty,   

like bells till the sound filled up the garden and lifted   

 

like bubbles spilling over the bricks that enclosed them,   

their happiness holding them, even if just for the moment.   

Although I did not understand a word they were saying,   

 

their sound surrounded me, fell on my shoulders and hair,   

and burst on my cheeks like kisses, and continued to fall,   

holding me there where I stood on the sidewalk listening…  

(From “The Laughter of Women,” by Mary Sherman Willis, The Hudson Review, Autumn 2007)

Writing Suggestion:

Whether during cancer treatment or simply living with any hardship or struggle, it’s good to find something—even a small thing—to smile or laugh about.  Dig back into your memories this week—the fun times you shared with others, a time you laughed so hard, tears ran down your cheeks.  Did shared laughter strengthen the bond you felt with others?  Write about one of those times, remembering the laughter.  Let a little “ha, ha” brighten your day..  Remember what Charlie Chaplin said:  “A day without laughter is a day wasted.”

Read Full Post »

Here we go again.  It’s Super Bowl Sunday , and millions of people across the country will station themselves at the television set for the big game between the Denver Broncos and the Carolina Panthers.  It’s not just the annual excitement of the kick-off that has everyone’s attention.  Even this non-football fan has some interest in watching the “older” generation take on the “new,” and whether it will be Peyton Manning or Cam Newton who walks away with the MVP trophy.  The Super Bowl is more of a social event for me.   Despite my long history of shunning football games, I’ve sometimes been drawn in, whether because of the talk of “deflate-gate,” the showdown between an older athlete and a younger one, the entertaining half-time shows (I admit I tuned into Bruno Mars performance two years ago) or the sheer fun from the array of creative commercials.   Our neighbors are hosting a “Super Bowl Party,” and my husband and I will gather around the television set—at least for a while– to watch football with them, a past time I once knew as routine during my childhood.

Their jeans sparkled, cut off

way above the knee, and my

friends and I would watch them

from my porch, books of poems

lost in our laps, eyes wide as

tropical fish behind our glasses.

 

Their football flashed from hand

to hand, tennis shoes gripped

the asphalt, sweat’s spotlight on

their strong backs… 

(From:  “After School Street Football, Eighth Grade,” by Dennis Cooper, The World In Us: Lesbian and Gay Poetry of The Next Wave, 2008)

Because of my father, football reigned supreme at our house, and touch football was a neighborhood game played nearly every evening summer and fall.  I watched in rapt attention.  I wanted to play the game my father loved so much.  I pestered him to teach me how to pass the pigskin so I might join in the game.  My brother was still a preschooler, so I won my father’s assent and began my earnest practice as my father coached me, a bemused look on his face, no doubt mystified by his elder daughter’s desires.   I worked hard to impress my father with my talent, but he was not the one to give me the praise I longed to hear.  Rather, the local high school football star, Dick King, visiting his girlfriend, stopped to watch our neighborhood gang play football one autumn evening.  Instantly overcome with shyness, but acutely aware of his presence, I fired the ball in a perfect long pass to my buddy Marty.  “Man,” I heard King exclaim, “That girl can pass!”  I was elated.

My football prowess was short-lived.  Like it or not, football was reserved for boys, and my father’s attention soon turned to my kid brother.  I felt a little bereft as I watched father and son practice passing and blocking– lessons that paid off a few years later as my brother and nephew excelled as college football players and coaches.   I no longer shared in the sports talk or the knowledge of the game, and by the time my brother was playing college football, I was living in Canada where American style football was not as popular as ice hockey or soccer.  When we returned to California many years later, the language of football was lost on me.  I rarely watched a  game on television; I was hopelessly unfamiliar with the teams or players and became a puzzlement to my football-crazed siblings.

I still don’t understand much more than the most rudimentary aspects of a football game, and as someone who suffered a severe concussion in my teens, I wince with every bodily collision.  But I’ll watch the Super Bowl with our neighbors and try to share their enthusiasm while I attempt to translate the onslaught of sports talk that will infiltrate our conversation.

Sports and military metaphors are all too common in our daily language, whether we’re discussing politics, sports competitions or cancer.  Dhruv Khuller, writing in The Atlantic, referred to a 2010 study that found physicians use metaphors in nearly two-thirds of their conversations with patients with serious illness.  Since Richard Nixon declared the “war on cancer” back in the 1970’s, military metaphors have dominated the language of the cancer experience.  Sports metaphors are probably a close second.  As Khuller points out in his article, “Over the centuries, we’ve internalized these metaphors, so much so that we often may not recognize how they influence us.”

Military metaphors, like “war on cancer, “ battle “ or “win the fight” dominate how we conceptualize and talk about cancer.   Sports metaphors, like “our team,” ”end run” or “game plan” are also used, and, like a war, connote winning or losing.  The advantage of metaphors is that they quickly “condense our experiences into shorthand, illuminate complex issues and can paint a thousand words” (“Cancer as Metaphor,” The Oncologist 2004, pp.708-716).    We tend to use the same metaphors for many of life’s normal challenges and struggles, not only the cancer journey.   For example, “We’re going to win this one; you’re out of bounds; tackle the problem head on; step up to the plate; be a team player;  soldier through it; run with a good idea, or make an end run.”  While our metaphors are visual and illustrative, they also run the risk of creating stereotypes or confusion.

Like many common phrases of everyday language, metaphors are overused, phrases we seek to avoid in writing.  Yet they do serve a purpose between doctor and patient.  Dr. Jack Coulehan, Professor Emeritus of Preventive Medicine and Senior Fellow of the Center for Medical Humanities at Stony Brook University, writes:  Medicine abounds in image, symbol, and metaphor, all of which live in the minds of physicians, as well as patients. The art of medicine is grounded in empathy, trust, and shared beliefs; much of its healing power arises from image, metaphor, and ritual intended to benefit the patient. (Foreword, The Art of Medicine in Metaphors, 2013).  As described by the physicians interviewed for the 2004 Oncologist article, understanding the metaphors used by a patient and his or her family provides a common language, a sense by the patient that the doctor understands and is “there with them.”

Whether military or sports-inspired, what metaphors do you find useful in your interactions with your doctor?  When life “throws you a curve,” how do you communicate the experience or your determination to overcome any obstacles to your friends?  Do you “step up to the plate?” and take action?  How often do “over-used” metaphors creep into your conversation as you try to describe an event or your illness and treatment to someone else?

Writing Suggestion:

This week, “the ball is in your court.”  Consider the metaphors you use in your everyday life or in your cancer journey.  What purpose do they serve?  Or, perhaps your physician uses metaphors to describe your illness and treatment in ways that don’t resonate with you.  Use that as a jumping off place for writing.

Or why not have some fun as you watch the Super Bowl broadcast?  Laughter is good medicine, remember?  Listen for the sports talk, the metaphors used to describe the game.  Note them.  They can become your starting point for writing.  You might even search for an old copy of Sports Talk: A Dictionary of Sports Metaphors,  and by Robert Palmatier and Harold Ray , published in 1989.  It’s full of metaphors from many different sports and games.  Or try another, Talk Sporty to Me, by Jen Mueller, a book that promises to help you using Sports as a bridge to build personal and professional relationships!

 

Shift from your usual writing and purposely use these well-worn metaphors or clichés to write a short spoof or poem.  Sometimes even the most overused language can ignite a little creativity and humor.  So bring on the chips and guacamole!  Write a few of those choice phrases down.  Use them as your prompts for writing—wherever they take you.

Poets are like baseball pitchers.  Both have their moments.  The intervals are tough things.–Robert Frost

 

 

Read Full Post »

Follow