Word for the day. Funny. Haha?

Humor. Some say it's a prescription for sickness. I say it's a daily necessity, but since I just brought myself into this conversation let me explain "me" a bit. It has been said and I'm a firm believer that Marlin has a "sick" sense of humor, but I haven't always had this sickness. My sense of humor was shaped by a career. Law Enforcement. Growing up in my small family of three brothers, I was the youngest, which means I was picked on daily, beat up hourly and blamed for everything. My bestest friends were animals (no I was not intimate with our farm animals).

I grew up watching the Brady Bunch, the Partridge Family, Andy Griffith and Barney Fife, One Adam 12, Police Story, Captain Kangaroo, the Electric Company, Zoom, Sesame Street and many more programs that were very wholesome and oozing heavily in rated G. But back then, Saturday mornings were the bomb! It paid to wake up early, make myself a big bowl of cereal and turn on the television (no remote control!!) and watch cartoons until about noon. Then, Saturday Night Live came on after Mom went to bed. My SNL cast were the best! Bill Murray, John Belushi, Eddie Murphy, Gilda Radner, Garrett Morris, Dan Akroyd...that's all I can remember off the top of my head. They were the best and I have a lot of friends who can back that up!

But I was pretty cool with my sense of humor back then. The teenage years. It wasn't sadistic yet.

Then I became a police officer. For those who don't know me that well (yes their are a few of you), before I became a cop I was an innocent, naïve person. I did not use curse words very often. I was a nice young man. A police officer gets cursed at a lot. He/she hears the F word so much that it's impossible for it to escape your own vocabulary. So much so that it becomes one of your most used words. It even becomes part of the language used in your police commands. This is because the F word is a word that bad guys understand the best. It's the exclamation point of a sentence for them. Their own mothers used it in sentences when they meant business. Like "get the F out of bed right F ing now!!! So, cops use it in sentences like "get on the F ing ground," or "show me your F ing hands"!! The bad guy understands that you mean business and it means right now. Quickly.

Police officers, in their line of work have to see things that they would like to clean from their eyeballs and erase from their memory. Those motorists who come to a screeching halt in an attempt to see the blood and guts on a vehicle collision or crime scene, for example...the cop is the one who is usually standing in the blood and guts of what used to be a person, and taking snap shots. They go home each day and like me, I used to watch cartoons or comedies to try my best to get my mind off of what I had to see at work that day. But the images don't go away. After a few years, the cop is standing in the blood and guts cracking jokes and making fun of each other.

Now, we all have Facebook. Yay! We can even use curse words when we text or post on Facebook and it isn't that bad because we use the first letter of the curse word. Like, WTF. It doesn't sound all that bad when it's spelled out like that, does it? Yesterday, I heard of a very nice Christian lady I know who accidentally used WTF in her Facebook post. A friend of hers had recently been awarded Teacher of the Year in her district and so my friend wanted to post something nice, like "way to go" on her Facebook page. Many of others had already posted on this teachers page so she did too. But, instead of posting WTG (way to go) Sarah, on her friends page, her post read WTF Sarah! Imagine Sarah's surprise. But my friends daughter saw the post, called her mother on the phone and said "WTF mom"!! Just kidding. Her daughter did correct the post for her.

But sometimes our sense of humor does get us in trouble. Mine has. Many, many times. A lot. But, its my sense of humor and I need it to survive. Trouble or not, the show must go on! I believe there are many types of humor. I mean, many types of people have different senses of humor. Not all are the same. Like, my lovely Fiancé...she is mostly all business but she is also very funny. She makes me laugh quite a bit. But when it comes to what makes her laugh...let's just say its different. Let me describe it this way...after I had my first back surgery, which was a double fusion with hardware, I woke up to a great deal of pain. My Doctor told me before the surgery that it would be painful but I was already in pain so I thought it would be worth it. I was wrong. When I opened my eyes I saw my lovely lady standing next to my bed and then I felt a lot of pain. I grabbed the sides of the hospital bed and began shouting for pain medicine. I was shouting, loud! Again I saw my lovely lady who I love with all of my being but this time she had her hand pressed tightly over her mouth. She does this when she's laughing uncontrollably. You see, her sense of humor is different than say, most people. What makes her laugh is other peoples calamities. Especially mine. One day I was helping her move a very heavy table piece from a closet (she refuses to purchase any furniture unless it weighs at least 500 pounds) and while doing so I dropped it onto one of my toes (I was wearing socks) and smashed my toe into many pieces. It really hurt bad and so I hopped to a nearby chair and covered the toe with my hands to keep her from touching it. You see, she is a Nurse and apparently nurses like to immediately touch a body part when it is in a great deal of pain. Again, she is standing there with her hands pressed firmly against her mouth. Funny. For her.