Laughing Out Loud

How good is it to laugh?  To laugh out loud till you can’t breathe anymore.  Or to try not to laugh when you know you are not supposed to but you can see your friend out the corner of your eye lose all their composure.  Or to laugh at the mere thought of a past funny memory. Great moments.  I love to laugh, and my Mum and Dad always said that even as a child I laughed easily and often.  I can also make others laugh as for some reason ridiculous things happen to me on a regular basis.

One such person with a great laugh and a great sense of humour is a lovely man I worked with a few years ago.  It was just he, and I on the desk and boy did we share some funny moments.  I am smiling as I write this as I can see his face so clearly, he wore an incredulous look like no one else.  Incredibly professional I loved that my sense of the ridiculous could crack him up.  He would laugh because I was.

He once went away on holiday and left me in charge.  The doctor we worked for commuted between Adelaide and Melbourne, so there were many days where I was alone in the office.  On such days I would have the music playing louder than appropriate through the speaker system.   This was fine as no Doctor, no patients, so other than the odd courier I would expect no one to pop in. I would bring my INXS CD’s and sing away while I worked.

“Never Tear Us Apart” by INXS is one of my all-time favourite songs and I would sing that with extra gusto.  I like to think I sound amazing but probably not.  So, unbeknown to me, as I had my back to the door doing some filing, a lovely elderly lady had walked in.  She had then sat down on a reception chair just out of my line of sight.  It wasn’t until I was singing the line, “AND THEY WILL NEVER TEAR US APART!” that I saw her out of the corner of my eye.  I was mortified.  How long had she been there?  My first thought was one of hope that she may be hard of hearing.  I quickly turned off the music and assumed a very professional face lol as she approached the desk with a letter in her hand.  “Hello.  Can I leave this for Doctor?”  Of course, I said.  Anything you want I thought.  She then smiled and stated in a very deadpan tone of voice, “By the way, lovely singing dear.”   I smiled meekly, went bright red and she left with a grin from ear to ear. It was a funny thing to happen but when I retold this to my very professional co-worker, the look on his face………….I am cracking up now.

Another time I had to ask him about our security cameras in the office.  You see I had a pair of opaque tights which were too long for me.  However, I would wear them now and then as they never felt too bad when I put them on first thing in the morning.  By 10 am though they would drive me nuts and feel like they were falling down.  So, behind the door that separated the reception staff area from the front desk, I would hoist up my dress and pull and adjust these tights several times a day.  You can imagine that there was nothing ladylike in doing this, and some days I would feel like I had pulled them up to just under my chin lol.

I had been doing this for weeks when one day I looked up, and there was a camera looking down at me from behind the door.  I had never noticed it before.  I was mortified.  I had no idea if it was a monitored camera and I was loathed to ask my coworker the ins and outs of our security system.  Eventually, though I had to ask him if I could have been good fodder for YouTube.  He assured me no as he laughed long and hard.

One of the most ridiculous things that ever happened to me though was at a petrol station.  This is ironic given my aversion to putting petrol in my car. I just hate doing it. For years I would run the gauntlet with my petrol indicator on empty in the hope that Andrew would need my car, see it was on empty and fill it up for me.  That worked for some of the time.  It used to stress my Dad out no end.  He worried more than I did about me running out of petrol somewhere.  I then got a bit more responsible and would fill up my car but only from two petrol stations.  And only from certain pumps within those said petrol stations.  If those pumps were busy as I went to pull in, I would hesitate ever so slightly but would always drive on, prepared to run out of petrol rather than go to an “unfamiliar” pump.

One such day though Andrew and I were going away with friends for the weekend.  It was a mad rush for him to get home in time after work for us to be able to head off before dark. I knew that filling up my car as well would be highly irritating.  So this thought dawned on me after I had passed my “familiar” petrol stations.  It had been a rushed start to the morning getting the boys to school, and I was running late for work already, so I was feeling a tad stressed anyway.  I was almost coming to a stop at traffic lights and saw a petrol station on my left.

Mmmmmm…………………shall I go in there I thought…………….Shall I……………………….Yes.  So last minute I pulled in but then………………………….what pump do I choose?  In my hesitation, I ended up parking quite a way from the pump I finally decided on.  I got out the car and grabbed the petrol hose and stretched it as far as it would go to my petrol tank.  I really struggled to do this, and the pump kept clicking on and off.  A man in a baseball cap and Hi Vis shirt was filling up his Ute at the pump opposite and yelled out, “You alright there?”  I replied, “Um no, not really.  I can’t get the pump to stay on.”  He grinned and came over to assist.  He managed to yank the hose a bit further and got the nozzle in the petrol tank better.  “You made it hard for yourself parking so far away.”  Yes, yes I know.  Having a bad start to the day.  I thanked him very much, and he went back to his car.

Well, I was very flustered and a bit embarrassed by this stage.  I finished filling up the tank and then grabbed my purse to go into pay.  There were a few people in front of me, so I took my place in the queue and waited.  As I got to the counter, the lovely Indian man asked what pump number I was.  No idea.  I told him how much I owed instead.  No, he advised, that’s how many litres you have put in.  OMG.  I heard a man laughing at me, and it was Hi Vis man.  I paid and as I left he caught my eye and I said: “I really am having a bad start to the day.”  He smiled back, and I walked to my car.

I unlocked my car.  Got into my car.  Shut the door of my car.  And then realised.  I was sitting in the passenger seat of my car.  The fact that I did not realise this until I shut the car door must have been written all over my face.  Hi Vis man at this stage was walking back to his car, putting his money in his wallet.  He looked up as I looked up and he cracked up.  Hands on his knees, bending over he laughed and laughed.  I got out of the car and yelled: “See, I told you I was having a bad day!”  Still laughing he replied, “Well honey, you made mine.”

This story was the cause for a terrific laugh that weekend, but it didn’t end there.

A few weeks later I pulled into the same petrol station.  I put it as number 3 on my list of petrol stations I would go to now that I had a better idea of which pump to go to and how best to park.

Walking in to pay after successfully filling up with no assistance required I was greeted by the same Indian man behind the counter.  His face lit up when he saw me, and he started calling out the make of my car “Nissan Tiida, Nissan Tiida!”  OMG, what had I done now was my first thought.  He came out from the counter with a Subway serviette and thrust it in my hand.  On it was a man’s name and mobile number with “please call me” written in black pen. He went on to tell me that the man who helped me previously had popped back the following week and had left it for me.  He was so excited, and I felt he thought he was part of a fabulous “first meeting” love story.  “I’m married,” I said.  In his thick accent, he just said very loudly “Oh nononononononononono.”  “Yes yes yes yes yes,” I replied. “Oh nonononononononononono.” He looked so deflated.   For me, his reaction is the funniest part of this story.

I asked him for a pen and on the serviette wrote “Thank you, but I am happily married.  But…….. you made my day.”

And I laughed out loud, yet again.