xmlns:og='http://ogp.me/ns#' The Font of Noelage: Spreading happiness and joy

Monday 14 January 2013

Spreading happiness and joy


All my life I have tried to move around spreading happiness and joy wherever I went.
Some days I succeeded and some days I didn’t.
However, since the new year began, I can truly say that I have had my most successful happiness and joy spreading days of all time.
Everywhere I went people smiled at me, some chuckled and some burst out laughing uncontrollably.
As a spreader of happiness and joy I was an Olympic gold medallist.
How did this come to pass I hear you impatiently ask?
Oh, what's that? You are not that keen to know.
Well, I’ll tell you anyway.
Just over a week ago I was having a wonderful dream. I was playing for the Eagles in a Grand Final. I was the absolute star. I was a combination of Graham Farmer, John Todd and Jack Sheedy. Younger reader may now leave the table to google the AFL Hall of Fame and enlighten themselves on the careers of these magnificent footballers circa 1942-1974.
In my dream game it was the dying seconds of a very close match. The opposition forward was leading out to take a mark and then kick what would be the winning goal.
I was determined to stop him and launched a ferocious full blooded tackle.
The next thing I know is that I was on the floor and had blood coming from a deep cut on my nose.
So real was my dream that I had thrown myself out of bed and whacked my nose on the bedside chest of drawers. I groggily sat back on my haunches, reflecting that “living the dream” is not all that it is cracked up to be.
By this time my wife had come to my aid and led me to the bathroom to apply some first aid.
Later that morning I went to the doctor who inserted six stitches in a cut that rested painfully between my eyebrows and the top of my nose. Six stitches. My head now had a lot in common with a cricket ball.
When I told the doctor how I had injured myself he burst out laughing. The nurse who had first cleared away the debris from my proboscis had responded in exactly the same way.
My days of spreading happiness and joy had begun.
After he had placed quite a large bandage over my wound the doctor said to come back in five days and have the stitches removed. He was smiling as he said it.
From that moment everyone who glanced, gazed or stared at me was caused to smirk, smile or guffaw.
After a while I became used to this attention and forgot that I looked as if I had just gone ten rounds with Joe Louis. (Ok. Ok. For the very young, Joe Louis was heavyweight boxing champion of the world from  1937 to 1948. Does anyone know, or even care, who is the heavyweight champion of the world right now? I think he is some Polish fellow).
During the week my wife and I were dining at a very fine resort in Busselton. After a splendid meal I went up to the desk to pay the bill.
“What’s the matter with you?” queried the man behind the till.
Puzzled, I said, “What do you mean?”
“Well, you’ve got a bloody great bandage on your face.”
I’d completely forgotten about the bandage.
“What happened?" he asked.
“You wouldn’t want to know,” I replied.
“But, I do want to know,” he insisted.
"If I told you, you would laugh."
"No I wouldn't."
So I told him.
He burst out laughing. Then he  turned to some of his fellow workers  and relayed my story. They also burst out laughing.
And that is how it was for the rest of the week.
Two days ago I had the stitches removed and now just the smallest of band aids rests on my wound.
Life is pretty much back to normal. But for a week I was the world’s greatest spreader of happiness and joy.
If you feel like a really good laugh look down the page now.

Battered but still smiling

What do you mean, "What's wrong with me?"


No longer a laughing matter.

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