Somewhere along the road, our sense of humour hit a road block.
I read a joke today. It is of no consequence what it was other than that it triggered a memory for me.
My late Uncle used to tell that particular joke back in the 80's.
As I recollect he did it with an Irish accent. He told some great jokes. It started me thinking about how nice it is to still have a laugh in these troubled times.
Uncle Bob was a chain smoking 100 a day man; drank a bottle of whiskey a day man, a lover of hamburgers - the black sheep of the family. That person who everyone shuddered at when he walked into the room.
But he was a good man, a funny man,, an intelligent man and a real individual. And I loved him. He never got violent or drove a car when he had been drinking. He never got angry or nasty. He never got arrested for drunk and disorderly and he worked a very high powered professional job and earned lots of money. Never called in sick with a hangover and never hurt a soul.
He held court in the smoking area of family gatherings and reeled off his theories on Life, the Universe and Everything. Uncle Bob was " the man."
He believed in God, was Catholic, yet told some great Catholic jokes, Priest jokes and Nun jokes. His Catholic parrot joke was - well, a cracker. His jokes were legendary. I still know them off by heart.
He passed some years ago, a man who had abandoned tobacco and alcohol to die a lonely and miserable death in a nursing home far away from me. I once asked him, about 2 years before he passed, did he feel better for having giving up his vices.
He replied
" I feel better physically, yes. But do I feel happy? That is a different story. I don't feel like me. I am no longer me. But physically? Yes, much better. "
When he died, he was a small man in a small body that was once tall, rather chunky and very impressive. He had lost his sense of self. He had been a big drinking, big smoking, big eating man. He gave up all the things he loved. His tobacco, his booze, his calorie laden burgers and his love of life.
He no longer laughed.
The last conversation I had with him, and we both knew he was on the way out, he said to me " I am in a wheelchair. I am in a bed made for old people. I am told it is because I drank, smoked and ate all the wrong food. I felt frightened so I gave it all up. And you know what? I have never been more miserable in all my life. "
Yes, Uncle Bob had stopped laughing. He stopped holding court and he stopped being the guest that everyone dreaded for fear that he would tell jokes or extol one of his profoundly held views. An avid reader. right wing conservative in his Politics and fiercely anti abortion, he never wavered from his viewpoint. That life was sacrosanct; technology was bound only by the limits of human intelligence and the money available to fund it; that Politics was as good as the People who were elected to run things and the future of Australia came down to happiness.
Uncle Bob used to say that Australians are happy people. When they are not happy, Australia is in trouble.
I asked him, when I was about 17 years old, " well, what makes Australian's happy? ".
And he said " Australian's are happy when they are allowed to be Australians :"
All countries are the same.
As a poster here remarked some years ago:
" Australian politics have become an exercise in deceptive behaviour by our elected representatives who speak nonsense about settled science and must accept it, express annoyance that GMH has decided to leave completely and ignore all the political decisions that caused it, beginning with the 1975 UN Lima Agreement, signed the Paris Agreement and an emissions (CO2) reduction target but many are now pushing for zero by 2050 which was not in the Paris Agreement that is still in place, etc. "
Are we witnessing the death of Australia as we knew it?
There is a very long list of economic vandalism, cost of living rising up and up.
Meanwhile far too many Australians debate and argue trivial by comparison matters like climate change hoax, and ignore that it is a smokescreen to hide socialism masquerading as environmentalism, redistribution of developed nation's wealth and attacking free market capitalism that gave us wealth and prosperity.
Which brings me back to Uncle Bob. We are being told to give up everything we enjoy because we are told it is not good for us or for the planet.
Heating our homes? Bad for the planet. Cooling our homes? Bad for the planet. Being white? Bad; being patriotic and hardworking? Bad.
Smoking and drinking is bad, but injection rooms for heroin - well, that's good.
Eating meat is bad but eating bugs is good.
During the lockdowns, swimming, sitting in the fresh air and playing in the park were bad. But being locked in a room with no ventilation was good.
A sense of humour may as well be banned because someone might get offended and, well, that's bad.
I often wonder how HAPPY these climate change and animal liberationists really are. They sure don't look very happy. In fact, they always look angry, grimaced, fearful and downright bloody miserable.
Just like Uncle Bob was before he passed away.
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