Daily Read #12: Laughter is the only medicine

Have you voted? Please do. Give us one more thing to be grateful for this week! By voting every day. Only 7 more chances: use every one!

My Dads Eyes: http://www.hoopesvision.com/contest/vote.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To quote the marketing campaign of Laughing Cow Cheese. Have you laughed today?

More importantly have you laughed at yourself today?

Our family are proponents of laughing at yourself, which basically means if you aren't going to laugh at yourself you are going to be the only one not laughing but we won't let that stop the rest of us.

For some reason even the most horrifically mortifying experience that could happen to a young person* is almost instantly tempered if you can somehow muster to laugh about it.*[Or old person, I for one am not finished doing exceptionally embarrassing things even daily] Not to mention with researchers showing that laughter lengthens life, you are diffusing what the melodramatic part of you thinks 'just might kill you from embarrassment' and gives you even more time in mortality to laugh about it.

Take this family favorite story about the blog's current heroine Rachel for example.

She had fairly recently turned 16. Our family was on a grand expedition back East touring family, church and American History sites. As has already been proven by this weblog family vacations are a great way to mix things up just enough that everything becomes instantly more memorable and usually for very good reason.

On this particular vacation we had been to probably close to 20 church visitors centers which again is great because a). They're free; b). They've got very clean restrooms; c) they're usually not crowded d). they help you stay awake in Sunday School particularly when you're able to spend time thinking about this particular story* *[Just be sure to be able to explain the reason for your muffled laughter].

So we're at the Hill Cumorah Visitors Center. It's a Sunday so we had finished church earlier in the day and hadn't been anywhere we could change yet. Again another reason why church history sites are nice--you don't stand out nearly as much if your family is in white shirts & ties or dresses.

So as mentioned, we were always making sure we used a restroom at the Church history site because regardless of how many other stops we were making in a day there were no guarantees you wouldn't contract a communicable disease if you had to use their restroom.

Rachel had slipped away from our tour group to use the bathrooms which were on the other side of the visitor's center and said hi to a set of Elders [Male missionaries likely between the ages of 19-21] as she passed them at a help desk.

Rachel finished in the restroom and came out to join us again. She smiled as she approached the help desk and they smiled back. As she passed the desk and continued to walk towards us, one of the missionaries called out to her, 'Sister!' naturally she turned back only to see him pointing down and shout 'Your Dress!'.

Instinctively Rachelfirst put her hands down the back of her dress which she felt ended just at her waist where dress gave way to nylon. Further patting combined with swift neck craning confirmed her horror. The back of her dress had gotten caught in her nylons when she stood and pulled them up. While the front of her dress was left quite undisturbed the back was bunched up around her backside.

Now Rachel likely would be thinking quickly enough to just turn to the Elders wink and blow them a kiss but sixteen year old Rachel was undoubtedly petrified. Running back to the restrooms to fix it would mean passing the Elders again so she instead retreated to the emptiest corner she could find turned her back towards it and pulled the dress out along with her dignity.

We thankfully were about done with the tour as I'm sure we couldn't have left fast enough for her. To her great credit we were all laughing about it before we'd left the parking lot.

And have been laughing still.

Likely so have those missionaries.

Hopefully so have you because they say if you can get them to laugh you can get them to help. And we need your help!

Vote! My Dads Eyes: http://www.hoopesvision.com/contest/vote.html
Get your friends to vote! My Dads Eyes: http://www.hoopesvision.com/contest/vote.html
Come back and do it again tomorrow.