Funny Things

Sometimes I think of god as a being with a pretty decent sense of humor, someone who can laugh at others and at himself, the kind of being who waits behind a door for five minutes to pounce out at a friend and yell BOO and then finds true delight when the friend jumps a foot off the ground, someone who wouldn’t be afraid to splash some water at a colleague on a work trip to the lake … you know, someone who doesn’t want you to take life too seriously, at least not all the time.

That’s the explanation that comes to mind when I’m walking out on a beautiful sunny day with the breeze dancing around, perhaps like a semi-talented ballerina, whipping small yellow leaves off the trees and swirling them around in an animated piece of art – and for a minute I feel like I’m in the middle of a sweet romantic drama – and then suddenly a large dry leaf strikes me in the face.  Like a blooper.  The director calls CUT! And I look up and imagine god suppressing a giggle.

Or when I look out from my window to see the sky bright and blue, grab my bag, exit through the two doors, lock the door and emerge out into the world through the third door – only to find that an army of clouds had simply been keeping low and hiding behind the buildings around my flat and had now amassed above to spray us all with a sharp misty rain. If you were smart, the annoying little know-it-all who sits cross-legged on a bench in my brain reading a National Geographic magazine looks up and says, you would have brought your umbrella. Seriously. 10 months in this country and you still can’t remember to just think of the small umbrella as your third limb? And there god is again, grinning, oh how much fun it would be to control the weather!

I think it may be an attempt to convince humans to just chill the fuck out.  And these are big words from a person whose mood can light up like a bulb if the sun is out or if a good song comes on the radio, as if the world revolves around me and these are just little signs to tell me I should be happy – while on the other hand if I miss my bus by three seconds my whole world plummets to the darkest depths of humanity because that is but an omen for a horrible day to follow.  Not too proud to say I’m a bit mercurial. Outside stimuli have a strong control on my perspective on life.

I like being organized and planning things.  It saves me a lot of time and more often than not, things flow like a murky brown river, staidly on course.  But when it doesn’t, watch the creases come to crow on my forehead, like the bird feet markings on a pie baked by Snow White.  Sometimes the workings of fate (or a comical god) turn out to be a better planner than us (for example when the internet decides to stop working three days before a final exam, or a train is delayed but you end up being on the same bus as a very good looking man, when you can’t find the jeans in your size but the week after find that there is a sale in the store…).

The problem with over-thinkers is that we are always trying to figure out how things could be better, faster, smoother, more productive, more efficient and effective.  Not only does that mean we get exhausted by the end of the day, our phones also run out of battery sooner because we are constantly Google mapping the quickest route to the cutest coffee shop and the timings of the nearest grocery store.  Non-planners tend to take things easier – they don’t mind when things derail because they hadn’t anticipated them to do anything else.  So if Fahad and I arrive at a restaurant only to find that it doesn’t serve lunch and opens at 5:30 pm, I’ll be devastated and annoyed, smacking myself mentally for making such a rookie mistake, but Fahad is going to be like, oh well let’s get some fried chicken instead.

I think a marriage between a planner and non-planner can be funny, sometimes explosive and frustrating (as or more frustrating than a web browser that’s been stuck for the last ten minutes) but if observed and experienced with a sense of humor, it can be quite cute and comical.  So while I plan our vacations to the minute, Fahad simply crosses out 1/3 of the list by waking up at 10 am instead of 8 am like all obsessive travelers and convincing me that a night spent in bed watching Who Wants to be A Millionaire (and The Chaser, a new favorite TV show since we came to England!) is better than walking 20 minutes to the oldest cathedral in the city.  And of course, if it wasn’t for me we wouldn’t be getting such good travel deals and seeing quirky things like Bizarre Bath – a non-historical but very funny walk around the city centre in Bath – or downloading the audio guide in museums and castles and getting the history behind weird pieces of furniture and archaic structures, but if it weren’t for him our feet would fall off and we would never get enough sleep and we wouldn’t get to see The Chaser beat12 people in one episode, and we wouldn’t sit down on random benches and parks and just soak up life.

Seeing the humor in bad situations is essential.  A trip on the curb that makes your ice cream topple off onto the gravel, your child – or husband – spilling Thai red curry onto the bedspread that you laundered a day ago, a rug that you ordered online that turns out to be made for a dollhouse …

Laughing or cracking a joke to lighten the mood or dissolve an incipient argument between your mother and sister, or between yourself and your wife, or maybe making someone who has made a mistake feel better …

I think we have a pretty good sense of humor on my father’s side of the family (the occasional humility you read is also from the same side of the family – and please insert a tongue smiley here to indicate that this is me being ironic).  We have always been able to laugh at others, and more importantly, at ourselves.  Every third sentence is a joke at each other’s expense, and, I like to believe, it makes us tougher, gives us a thicker skin and shows us that life is easier, probably better, if you can learn to laugh at even the more serious things.  When life gives you lemons, make a joke about their weird shape.  And so that’s how we dealt with everything from early balding to broken ankles to divorce to heart disease.

I think Pakistanis, overall, also have a great sense of humor.  And that’s how we survive – it makes us resilient – and maybe sometimes complacent. So while other people might organize a protest or a march against their leader’s offensive remarks, we will create a meme and write satire and joke and guffaw about it.  Because sometimes if you don’t find the humor in life, it can make you lose your mind.

Children also have a great sense of humor – have you noticed how a toddler will spill bright purple juice all over the floor and then just look up with a great cheeky grin? (How do you think most adults react to spilled juice?)

One of the greatest things about bus rides and solitary life is the amount of time and concentration I have to observe people around me as my turquoise bus rumbles by – it wasn’t supposed to rain today so a lot of people were caught a bit unprepared when it suddenly started to pour, a thin but pervasive windy rain that rendered cheap umbrellas ineffective.  Now it’s interesting to see how most British people are quite unfazed by rain (duh. Adaptation is a real phenomenon!) and will simply pop up their hoodies or speed up their walking just a little bit.  And unless the rain is at a certain speed and thickness, they don’t even bother to really open their umbrellas.  But anyways, it was definitely raining enough for you to pull your umbrella out if you had it on you but this lady walking with two of her children definitely did not have one.  And it was such a great depiction of how children are so much cooler than adults – the woman walked with her head bowed a bit, eyebrows so furrowed I could tell she was frowning from more than five feet away, looking seriously miserable.  The little boy whose hand she held, on the other hand, was skipping, with his face turned up to the rain, grinning and making sure to hop in every puddle on the sidewalk.  And as my bus zipped past them, I smiled as well because, in case you’d forgotten, smiles are contagious.

So the next time you’re caught outside without an umbrella or the grocery bag rips open and your carrots and cans tumble to the ground – take a deep breath and shake your head wryly, and then perhaps even smile, because if somebody filmed it and added a comical soundtrack to it, you know it would get a lot of likes and laughs on the internet.  And almost always, it’s better to laugh than scowl.