I didn’t laugh at the time (at least I don’t think I did) but this memory always makes me laugh:
Took the offspring to a local wild animal park. Youngest son was 1 at the time so I had him secured in my nifty Kelty backpack, high enough up to be able to see the critters. We finished with the quadripeds and proceeded toward the aviary. As the rollup door was opened I could see the beatiful macaws, and without thinking, walked in. I cleared the overhead door, but I walked my son’s face smack into it. Damn near fell over backward when he hit, too.
It’s very hard to comfort a toddler who is directly behind and above you by six inches.
Apparently a couple somewhere in Mexico named their son Usmail (pronounced, rather elegantly, “OOS - ma - EEL”). They’d seen it on a package from El Norte.
For a sick but hearty laugh, check out today’s thread:
A lady at my dad’s workplace was bragging about her new grandson a few years ago. The parents had named him after both of his grandfathers; the resulting name was Fisher Price.
I was in the Girl Scouts all the way through high school. My troop leader didn’t like me. She was not very bright and had no sense of humor. I wanted to earn badges and go camping and stuff, and she just wanted to go through the motions.
So I started to take delight in embarrassing and flustering her.
While preparing for a summer campout with all the Girl Scouts from our local council, I was rummaging around in my parents’ store room for camping supplies. I found a Ken doll that was missing its head and one leg.
I tied a string around his ankle, named him Mangled Cliffdiver Ken, and wore him as a necklace throughout the entire campout. After that, the Girl Scout types treated me like I was a ticking time bomb or something–“That one’s crazy…just smile and nod so she doesn’t go nuts and stab us!”
At the next year’s campout, I got two of the other Girl Scouts to revolt with me. We set up our own tent and declared ourselves to be a splinter faction of our regular troop–“the Vigilante Girl Scouts.” We embroidered ourselves some special Vigilante patches and sewed our own Vigilante Girl Scout flag to enter into the troop flag contest. Our flag portrayed a beefcake guy with dreadlocks in red underpants.
Despite the fact that our flag clearly had the best craftsmanship, we were given second place. A judge later told us that they didn’t give us first place because they wanted to discourage our “unusual behavior.” It might have had something to do with the fact that our motto, written on the back side of the flag, was “Vigilante Girl Scouts will KILL YOU!” Not a wholesome message.
After that, the other Vigilante Girl Scouts and I did break with our old troop. We recruited a new leader–someone who was unqualified but amused by our antics–and got the council to agree to let us do our own thing. The three of us all earned our Gold Awards.
Two things that have always made me giggle - the first has sadly been recently hijacked into a ringtone, but will always be a classic for me in the original format.
