What Makes You Laugh?

[kmsmith8]

My past week....let's see I get out of work on Monday (my first day at my new job) and my car won't start. To make a long story short the car was towed to a shop and they couldn't find anything (of course the car started working when it got to the shop) so they replaced the battery because the only thing they could come up with is that the cold had weakened an already weak battery (I think the lowest it has gotten here has been around -10 not including wind chill...not as cold as Caite's home, but still a little chilly). So I get a ride from my boss of all people to the car shop to pick up my car today. Everything goes great. But then I get the great idea to stop at Target to pick up a couple things. I get out of the car and can hear the air coming out of my front driver side tire. In about 2 minutes the tire had gone completely flat. I know that I can't change the tire, so I give the auto shop that I just left a call (it was only about 4 miles away). They agree to come out and help me with the tire. They ended up patching the tire in the Target parking lot and not charging me anything (which I was really happy about, they didn't need to do that, just based on that I am a lifetime customer now). Why did my tire go flat? As I was pulling into the parking space in Target I ran over what resembled the top inch of a screwdriver. Now I just need to get that wheel rebalanced.

My car troubles are definitely to the point of being funny. I just got done signing up for AAA online. After all of that, I figure I can't go wrong.

Does anyone else have funny car stories?

Katie

[postscript]

Hi Katie!

Super catalogue of events of your first day in your new job. Presumably the opportunity of chatting with your boss as he drove you to pick up your car wasn't the opportunity to push for the holiday period you wanted?

I'll tell you a little story about my own first work encounter. In fact, it was the interview stage, not the first day on the job. I too was fresh out of college and this was my first real-time serious job interview.

I was announced into my interviewer's office and promptly tripped over the rug that lay on top of the carpet! I would have gone flat on my face but managed to stumble across the room to the far wall where there was a bookcase against which I managed to steady myself.

Some ten years later, when I came to leave the company, my boss took me out for a celebratory lunch. I don't think we were celebrating the fact I was leaving but the fact I had survived there for ten years! As he moved on over the years, he took me with him, so we frequently lunched together to discuss various company matters.

As part of the conversation, looking back on our years together, he said to me, 'Do you know why I decided I wanted you?' I said 'no', having gone through a variety of academic and scholastic achievements I thought had been his reasons. 'It was your falling over the carpet!'

'Not that you fell over it but the way you recovered from the incident. Totally unflummoxed, you turned to the man you hoped was going to give you a job, my own boss at the time, complaining that having a rug on top of a carpet was damned dangerous and he really ought to set a better example to the factory in terms of health and safety! In that moment I realised I had someone whom I could rely on to keep his head in a crisis on the factory floor! All else proving equal, you had the job at that moment'

So, Katie, who knows, you've drawn your boss's attention on you in an unusual way and may have started a long, successful and very happy career! I hope so. Have fun! Work should be fun and while there have been ups and downs, I've spent a life-time enjoying my work.

Peter S.

[postscript]

Hi! and thanks for joining me from my reply to Steve H's post under 'Photography', in which he recalled being frozen-in during one winter on his Megan 3 canal narrow boat.

The incident with which I am about to entertain you (I hope) must have taken place twenty years ago. Is that possible Steve? Or may be thirty years ago, when the canal was so frozen over as to have sufficiently thick ice across it to enable walking on it.

I can remember as a child seeing broken ice sheets an inch thick and two or three inches thick where sheets of ice had been broken by some steel-hulled boats that had ridden up on it to break it and the broken sheets had frozen together. That would be around half a century ago!

I can't believe I have just written that!. I've gone all shivery at the thought that I can look back in my memories half a century... and more!

Anyway, that is how thick the ice was on this particular morning when I was walking to the station and decided that rather than walk along the towing path I would walk down the centre of the canal. For some reason it seemed to create a bit of a stir as people walking the towing path tended to gawp and little crowds accumulated on the various pedestrian bridges that crossed the canal, to watch my approach and subsequent departure, as I passed underneath them, giving them a cheery wave as I did so.

They must have thought the 'Man from the Ministry' was on the move as I was dressed in a dark blue pinstriped suit--not that anyone would have noticed as over it I wore a full length dark blue woolen overcoat--but I did wear a bowler hat, a bright red scarf (not unlike those scarves used for snowmen) and carried in one hand a brown leather attaché case and in the other a neatly furled umbrella. Admittedly, this last was a little odd as I rarely manage to furl an umbrella neatly!

That reminds me of an incident with my father. Now he really was a 'Man from the Ministry' and always put me to shame when it came to furling umbrellas neatly. I recall an occasion when I was driving up the dual carriageway out of Hemel Hempstead towards London when I was overtaken by a Daimler limousine (they used Daimlerss in those days) the driver of which had the effrontery to hoot me.

The road was quite clear, it was dual carriageway and I was not in any way impeding him. I gave the uniformed chauffeur a dirty look as he overtook me, to find myself then staring into the face of its back-seat passenger, who was grinning cheerily at me. It was he who had asked the uniformed chauffeur to hoot to draw my attention to him. It was my father! He was using the official Ministry limousine to take him to a meeting in London.

But I digress, of course!

It was in fact exceedingly dangerous to walk in the middle of the canal, which is why one could not think of skating on it because there is a permanent strong flow of current underneath that ice. If the ice had broken all I could hope for would be that I could hold my breath long enough to arrive at the lock gates where the flow would be sufficiently strong as to be ice-free in their immediate vicinity. That of course assumed the first set of gates were shut and not open. If they were open then one went through to the second set where the depth changed from six feet to 12 or 15 feet! Never mind the weight of winter clothes dragging one down with water absorption!

It was a lovely day, I was in a care-free mood and I just felt like doing something differentt as the opportunity presented itself. Looking back on it now I suppose I can better understand why so many people gathered on the bridges across the canal. It must have seemed a little odd, although I was cafreful to ensure I went round fhe locks along the towing path and got off the ice some way from the lock gates!

Peter S.

[comet]

Hi Folks,

Our canals froze fairly solid in 1962 and yes we played and jumped on them,

of course I was a lot lighter then too...
comet

[kmsmith8]

Great story Peter. I am not laughing quite as hard right now (not at your story, mine) because my car wouldn't start again today...guess it wasn't the battery. I think something that happened about a year and half ago is happening again. The car is a loaner from my parents, but at this point I need a dependable car so I am going to buy one in the next week or so (holding off car payments isn't worth this mess, even though my parents are paying for the repairs). After all of this, I am not sure if my boss is going to remember me or my car.

Katie

[Russ]

Hi Katie

You'll want to get a permanent patch on that tire. It sounds like they put a plug into it, and they have a habit of coming out at the least opportune times, especially when the plug is installed in as cold a weather as you've been having. A permanent patch is done from the inside of the tire, thus they need to dismount the tire to do so. They can also balance it while the tire is off the car (you shouldn't need the wheel balanced if you got just a flat). It should run you about $20-$25 for the patch. I can't diagnose what's wrong with you car from here (I wish I could). I could be anything from the wiring down to a frozen Bendix on your starter, to a frozen fuel pump/filter. If you want, you can contact me offline and I can try to help.

Back on topic. What made me laugh the other day is Larry the Cable Guy. His kind of humor is gross to some, but it makes me crack up!


Russ

[kimmie]

Hey, here's a funny story for you. My glasses weren't fitting me right so I took them off and saw that they were bent and tried to straighten them. Well, as I was doing that, they broke in half. Haha! So my dad got some JB Welding stuff and glued them together. Luckily the next day I had an eye exam and got a prescription for new glasses, I hadn't started wearing the new ones until today, and I only started wearing them cuz them cuz my old ones broke...AGAIN... Anyway, just thought I'd share.

Kimmie

[grant]

Fabulous interview story Peter!!

Reminds me on one of my early work experiences.

Although for most of my railway career I worked in purchasing, my first couple of years (1966-1968) was spent in Scrap Sales - the department responsible for disposing of the myriad of redundant assets bequeathed upon us by Dr Beeching!!

At the point in time of my story, one of my responsibilities was the disposal of redundant sleepers which would be graded 1 through 5 with 1 being best quality and 5 being scrap.

There was a huge demand for these sleepers at the time and, to avoid hundreds of small sales, we set up contracts with various companies around the country to whom we would sell bulk quantities and we would then direct enquiries for small quantities to the nearest contractor - simple!!

This particular morning my 'phone rang and it was a sleeper enquiry - a nicely spoken lady.

Yes, she wanted a sleeper "just one?" I asked "yes" was the polite response.

"We don't sell then singly" I offered appologetically - silence.

I began to explain why and that she would need to approach one of our contractors who bought quantities of sleepers in bulk.

My explanation was not going well, I tried a different approach.

"Where do you actually want this sleeper?" I asked "Edinburgh" replied the lady.

It was at this point the penny dropped! Perhaps I should just hang up and pretend it never happened. The lady confirmed my suspicion that she actually wanted a 'sleeping berth' on a train NOT a wooden sleeper upon which the train ran.

Needless to say I felt very silly explaining that she was talking to the wrong department and I never made the same mistake again.

Grant

[roger]

Hi Kimmie,

It's a good job you can laugh about it. If I broke my glasses, I wouldn't be able to post to this forum!

I can hear the sighs of relief from here!

Roger

[postscript]

Never twigged that one, Grant, until the last.

However, there was a bit of an upset in Berkhamsted a few years ago when the old rail sleepers used for kerb stones did not fit in with the new pavement layout. We managed to insist one at least was set into the pavement with a plaque stating its history. They had been holding up the pavement most satisfactorily since they were taken off the railway to make way for the new fangled style of wooden sleeper, enabling both rails to be fitted as a pair, making the gauge more reliable. They were the granite sets that had been laid down when the railway was first built!

Peter S.

PS: This argably means these setts were laid down under the direction of Stephenson himself!

[jons]

Reading these posts gives a good argument for what makes old and young laugh. For instance no-one on here would find my 'Hayley Fiction' thread on the official site funny as far as I know. But thats one of the reasons why I wrote the Morecombe and wise dialogue in the hope of making someone older laugh. However I'm not giving up! Peters story was told in a similar way to Ronnie Corbett's 'Chair Dialogues'. So I'm asking if its worth writing one of those (Yes I have an obsession with writing for old and long dead comedians) or not bother.

[postscript]

Ronnie Corbett's chair DIAlogues? I don't recall the chair ever talking, I thought it was just him! On his own?
Peter S!

[bobcochran]

Actually it was the chair talking. Ronnie Corbett was a prop.

Nothing wrong with old or long dead comedians. I love listening to the old ISIHAC reruns that feature Willie Rushton.

The Goons are still funnier than a LOT of current comedy.

Eddie Braben and Barry Took were also a couple of great comedy writers.

[jons]

In the UK we have a channel called UKTV Gold which is full of repeats of great comedy shows like Dad's Army and Keeping Up Appearances and they are far superior to some of the shows you get nowadays.

As for the chair dialouges, the chair was the puppeteer and Ronnie was the puppet!

Ronnie's digressinations (I don't know if thats a word! Digressions is it?) were funnier than the actual joke!

[bobcochran]

The US version of that channel is TV Land, which carries many old series, though I do wish they'd carry the the brilliant chat show send-up "Fernwood 2-night" again.

Some PBS stations here carried "Dad's Army." It still is one of my all-time favorite TV comedies. The whole cast in that show was brilliant. I enjoyed Bill Pertwee, who played the ARP Warden, in the radio show "Round the Horne" as well.

We also had "The Goodies" on for a while, but they never quite caught on the way Monty Python did.

The Two Ronnies were also on for a bit during the '70s. I do have a VHS of "By the Sea" that's seen better days.