Need a few stories to make you feel good? Here’s a perfect book for you!
I’ve submitted a few stories to the exclusive Chicken Soup for the Soul series. The competition is very stiff. They get thousands and thousands of submissions. I was so excited to be in their Chicken Soup for the Grandparents Soul edition. Imagine my excitement to also be included in the newly released, Well that was Funny book. I may have bragged to everyone I know. If I missed telling you, just keep reading.
When my kids were young, I kept journals. I’d prop myself up in bed with hot coffee and yell, scream,
laugh and cry onto the pages. The old saying “One day you’ll look back and laugh at this” spoke to me.
There was no way I was going to laugh at some of my days.
The bathtub was filled with peanut butter water….not funny.
Our Labrador Retriever escaped again to play in the disgustingly murky creek. He arrived home covered in mud and expecting a treat for not eating the goldfish he’d terrorized…not funny.
My son’s two-foot lizard escaped and he didn’t even have a name for me to call him from wherever he was hiding….not funny. (What is with all these escape artists animals?)
“Mom, there’s a duck on our front porch scaring away my friends.” For two weeks we had a “watch duck”. Loud quacking and feathers fluffing, she scampered down the concrete like a German Sheppard guard dog. We made her a bed, named her Gracie, and fed her……cute, but not funny.
Toothpaste, smeared in swirls, covered my two-year-old son. His sisters thought they were artists. They were wrong…… Not funny.
One of my favorite journal entries about sleepovers is embedded in my memory. Six girls arrived happy, dancing and giggling. When the sun went down, they morphed into barking wolves who enjoyed loud music. They became little Olympians racing up and down our stairs like they needed super firm thighs for their event. My sofa was used as a balance beam. The karaoke machine came alive at 2 a.m. The tears began when Amanda got hurt feelings and needed to go home at 4 a.m.
I vowed never to have another sleepover as long as I lived. And I didn’t until the following month. Then it started all over again. Just like labor pains, you forget how painful they are once you see that sweet baby. Centimeter by centimeter, the memory comes back and yeouch! That hurts.
Thirty years later I’m smiling reading my journal entries now. It seems it‘s true. One day you’ll look back and laugh at those days.
Life is more exciting when you can laugh at yourself! Read my story and laugh along in the new Chicken Soup for the Soul: Well That Was Funny! https://amzn.to/3Z9brYA
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