UPBEAT TIMES • January 2014 • 19 Parents Just Wanna Have Fun Family Perspective SANTA ROSA, CA. ~


By Guest Writer Cindy Cowan • seacyd@comcast.net You


know when someone is laugh- ing at you and says, “I’m not laugh- ing AT you, I’m laughing WITH you”? They are not


laughing


WITH you. I am so guilty of this, I should be locked away! I can’t help it. I laugh when someone trips. If they are injured, I will help of course, but I’ll be struggling the whole time to keep from giggling in their face. I prefer if the person doesn’t go all the way down, but instead stumbles and looks around indignantly to see if anyone noticed. I did. Once, when I was about fif- teen, my brother and I watched our Mom walk into a sliding glass door that separated our living room. She was walking toward us, talking as though the door was open and we could hear her. We thought she would realize it was closed, but nope. The expression on her face sent her rotten teenag- ers into hysterics, and no, she was not laughing. I don’t think I’m mean


spirited, and believe me, my Mother has laughed at her children plenty of times. I must come by it naturally. For example; I love lemons and eat them like some people do oranges. When both of our kids were little, my husband and I


thought it was great


sport to let them go ahead and lick the lemon they so deeply desired. They always wanted to


taste what we were eating and we discovered there are a lot of foods that produce unusual facial con- tortions on small chil- dren.


There are so many things to laugh at your kids about. I crack


up daily at my


daughter’s morning hair-do. She has waist length, extreme- ly curly hair and she gets some fantastic looks going. I also laugh at their friend’s hair when they sleep over and wake up with bed-head. My son’s best friend is so used to it that he seems almost disap- pointed if I don’t laugh out loud. He crashes on our couch, so he doesn’t have time to even think about fixing it before I come out and wake him up. I think as parents, we are entitled to laugh at or with our kids whenever possible. They may not like it, but after all we go through... I have to share the “sledding incident” as it is known in my family. When our son was four, we took him to Lake Tahoe for a fun filled weekend of play- ing in the snow. We bought a round, saucer type of toboggan and headed for the nearest hill. I trudged up to the top with the boy, while my husband waited to ‘receive’ him down where it flattened out.


Instructing him to “Watch Mommy”, I executed a seam- less glide down the hill. I car- ried the sled back up to my


exuberant little child, helped him get on and grab the rope handles. What I forgot to do was tell him to lean to steer it. Thinking he was all set, I gave him a gentle push. The saucer immediately started spinning in wild circles as my now ter- rified toddler panicked and let out a phenomenal scream. He twirled out of control and each time he spun around, his eyes, now nearly as big as the sau- cer he was riding, locked with mine for a fraction of a second. His mouth was open so big; he seemed to have no chin. What was even more hilari- ous was the echo of his shriek bouncing off the surrounding hills, the pitch getting louder each time his head was fac- ing up hill at me. Seeing that he wasn’t in any danger, I did what any good mother would do. I laughed. Not a small chuckle either, but the bent in half, tears streaming down my face laughter that happens in these situations. My husband was trotting back and forth at the bottom, trying to decipher where the lad might land. About half way down, the


saucer came to an abrupt stop and landed on top of our less than thrilled son. He resembled an angry turtle as he crawled out from underneath it and announced, “This is NO fun!” To which I replied, between fits of laughter, “You’re right, it’s SNOW fun!” He was not laughing.


I am perfectly okay with


being laughed at, so if you see me out and about and I trip, have a good laugh on me. I deserve it! I may even laugh with you.


JOKES & Humor # 8


The neighbor kept telling him the chickens had the right to go where they wanted, but the birds were ruining Robert’s prize-winning flowerbeds. Two weeks later, a friend visited Robert and noticed his flowerbeds were doing great. The flowers were even beginning to bloom! The friend asked, “How did you make your neighbor keep his hens in his own yard?”


Poor Robert was having trouble getting his neighbor to keep his chickens fenced in.


Robert replied, “Easy! One night I hid a dozen eggs under a bush by my flower bed. The next day I let my neighbor see me gather them. I haven’t been bothered since.”.


Live simply that others might


simply live. Elizabeth Ann Seton


If you don't like how things are, change it! You're not a tree. ~Jim Rohn


UPBEAT TIMES • January 2014 • 19


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