Humor

Let’s Hear It for Humor: Look Back and Laugh

I’ve always had a circle of close friends. We would go to each other’s homes to hang out. Because our back and forth was a regular thing, we got to know each other’s parents and families as well as being good friends ourselves. There was one friend whose grandmother was always coming to visit when friends were there, and she always came to my friend’s house carrying a box. It was a pretty flowered hat box, but the weird thing was, she wasn’t wearing a hat.

One day, my curiosity got the better of me, and I couldn’t help asking why she carried it.

My friend laughed and answered, “It’s for her boob.”

Not surprisingly, the remark caught me off-guard, for one thing because it certainly didn’t sound like the kind of thing a kid would say about her grandmother. “You’re joking,” I said.

The best of a difficult situation

“No seriously,” my friend said. “My grandmother had a mastectomy, and she wears a prosthesis, or a fake boob. She stores it in the hat box each night.” She went on to say that it was  her grandmother’s way of making the best of a difficult situation.”

I laughed. It was kind of a funny story, but it made me feel a little uncomfortable. Still, even back then, I was thinking how my friend’s grandmother was kind of crazy, but maybe a little bit cool and brave, too.  Talk about making the best of things, I remember thinking at the time.

Fast forward almost 20 years. Little did I know that I’d be in a similar situation…challenged by a health issue that caused a body change with some inconveniences attached to it. Tentatively was the way I’d have to describe the way I did things during the first 6 months following my 2019 ileostomy. And sometimes I found myself in situations that you might say took me to the brink.

Travel dilemmas on steroids

The first time my wife, Michelle, and I went on vacation, I was 15 minutes away from a serious explosion on our trip home from Rhode Island. My bag was halfway to the top and we couldn’t find a decent place to stop, ideally a hotel with a clean public bathroom. Secondary problem was getting into the building and to the rest room without something bad happening. Every passing minute felt like an eternity.

Unfortunately, I had read too many stories about people who were driving when their bag exploded in the car. I don’t have to tell you that created quite the mess. I kept telling myself how the people who posted those stories well after the fact seemed to find humor in those mishaps—humor, note to self, well after the actual experience! That day in that car on the way home from Rhode Island, I couldn’t imagine cracking even the slightest smile about the near explosive status of my bag, let alone the worst-case scenario of a breakage. Even Michelle, who as I’ve mentioned is a positive thinker and the first person to challenge me out of my doldrums, was starting to show signs of concern, or so it seemed to me. And, so we kept driving, telling ourselves we’d find a place, but the time between driving and finding was getting interminable. Even worse, if we were lucky enough to find a decent bathroom, how could I be sure my bag would hold out from the car to the rest room.

Finally, in a last-ditch effort, we eyed a Barnes & Noble, ahead a little way after the exit on a parallel road. We got off the highway, onto the exit ramp and onto the local road with the strip mall, into the Barnes & Noble parking lot and the rest room that could potentially save me. Deciding I’d go it alone, I got out of the car, went inside, asked for the rest rooms and headed to the farthest corner of the store. The walk seemed interminable. But I made it.  I returned to the car a happier man, but also a man with some serious what ifs on my mind. Because what if I hadn’t? A disaster in our car? Even worse, a hugely embarrassing accident in Barnes & Noble?

Worst-case scenarios

Could I be like the guy who’d I’d read about online who’d had an accident in the elevator riding up to his office. Years later, he was still laughing.

Could I be like the guy, who’d had an accident in his car on the way to work. He’d gone back home to re-shower. When he got back in his car, he all too late discovered he’d neglected to clean his seat belt. He was faced with yet a new mess, and now a third shower, a second laundry load and change of clothes. He, too, had recounted that story online with amusement.

And finally, how about the guy who spent a long day at a bar and got loaded. He remembered making a few trips to the bar bathroom, but when he returned home, he discovered he had lost or left his bag somewhere between the bar and its bathroom and had absolutely no recollection of any part of that scenario. Though committed never to return to that bar, he described the situation as if it was hilarious.

Where do I stand?

Could I ever be any of those guys? It was a white-knuckle, clutch the steering wheel drive home as I played all those stories in my head—and a subdued few days after our homecoming as I again contemplated the what ifs. Then for some inexplicable reason, somewhere around day 3, a memory came back to me: my friend’s grandmother and the flowered hat box. I remembered something my friend had added to the story not only about her grandmother being really upset about her cancer and the loss of her breast, but also the part about how from the beginning her grandmother had dealt with her fear and sadness with humor. Right from the beginning my friend had said, her grandmother had made jokes. In fact, she shared that when her grandmother awoke from surgery, groggy as she was, she had looked down at her chest and asked, “Do I still have cleavage.”

The memory hit home. Here was this woman, experiencing a significant body and health change, and using humor as a way to manage her emotions. I got to thinking that if my friend’s grandmother could resort to laughter about a difficult health situation, and the guys who shared their embarrassing moments online, I probably could, too. I was on shaky ground, but never one to turn away from a challenge and married to a woman who doesn’t turn away either, I decided to do some research on humor.

The power of humor

Since then, I’ve read some interesting articles on the way humor makes people happy, improves their daily outlook and makes them more memorable. It also—and this is the one that really hits home—reduces stress. In fact, just recently when I was at Barnes & Noble (this time browsing books!), I came across HUMOR, SERIOUSLY—WHY HUMOR IS A SECRET WEAPON IN BUSINESS AND LIFE* AND ANYONE CAN HARNESS IT. EVEN YOU. Written by Jennifer Aaker & Naomi Bagdonas, a professor and lecturer respectively at Stanford Graduate School of Business, the book shows the fruits of their research about humor’s power. They teach a course called Humor: Serious Business and inspire people to use it more frequently and effectively. In their chapter entitled “Anatomy of Funny,” they wrote:

Plenty of pain becomes funny only after a certain amount of time. The farther we get from  the event itself, the easier it is to gain some perspective and see the humor in it. Like the old saying goes: Comedy equals tragedy plus time.

The guy in the elevator, the uncleaned seat belt and the lost ostomy bag intuitively knew that. So did my friend’s grandmother. As Aaker and Bagdonas also wrote, “…the next time you find yourself in a miserable—or miserably awkward—situation, take solace in the fact that eventually it’ll make for a great story. Eventually.”

Plus, humor makes tense situations less stressful.

The guy in the elevator, car and the bar prove that humor works. So does my friend’s grandmother. It’s time for me to adopt that philosophy, too, just in case you’ve struggled with the what ifs of inconvenient and embarrassing situations, I’m passing the case for humor off to you.  

Life has an unusual way of pushing us to where we need to go. To me, that’s what Ostoh is all about. 

If you’re interested in learning more about Ostoh and how it might increase your comfort, email us at hello@ostoh.com or use our contact form. Our goal is to make your ostomy life easier and make you feel what it means to be yourself.