{"id":512,"date":"2011-05-10T17:47:16","date_gmt":"2011-05-10T21:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.summerofjim.com\/?p=512"},"modified":"2011-05-10T17:47:16","modified_gmt":"2011-05-10T21:47:16","slug":"mama-mia-thats-a-spicy-meatball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/?p=512","title":{"rendered":"Mama Mia, That’s a Spicy Meatball!"},"content":{"rendered":"

What could I do?\u00a0 Is it a crime to laugh?\u00a0 OK, so I was by myself… sort of.\u00a0 I was in Norwalk’s TD North Bank to take care of a couple of things.\u00a0 Just one person standing at the teller’s counter.\u00a0 The teller.\u00a0 And two other bank officers (?) sitting at desks in the open area of the bank.\u00a0 And me.\u00a0 I was filling out a deposit slip when a tidbit of memory hit me…\u00a0and\u00a0it began<\/em>.\u00a0 A smile first, then a giggle escaped… then my mind, without any direction from me, hit the “replay button”… another giggle… this one longer, another replay… I shake my head trying to move to other things… another replay, the memory comes back into deeper focus, now a full\u00a0laugh… and now I am in deep trouble.\u00a0 All I can think of is this\u00a0TV commercial from some 40 years ago, and I am standing in a bank, by myself, filling out a deposit slip and laughing, and that maybe<\/em>, just maybe… the other people in the bank have no clue what’s going on.\u00a0\u00a0Sure, at this point\u00a0I am self aware, but the damn commercial keeps playing in my head and I try to stifle the next laugh… which makes an even more disruptive sound.<\/p>\n

So… what are the other people in the bank thinking, seeing a man off by himself laughing?\u00a0 Well… it’s one of a couple of things.\u00a0 A. He is deranged.\u00a0 B. He is deranged and <\/em>he has an Uzi under his poncho and we are all about to die! C. He’s just an old dude and he is peeing in his pants.<\/p>\n

Oh, did I mention that I had brought into the bank a cardboard tube, that originally housed a bottle of Auchentoshen Single Malt Whisky, but now contained 15lbs of coins?\u00a0 TD Bank has one of those coin converter things.\u00a0 And I begin to walk over to that machine… smiling and laughing… maybe those other folks are thinking, “he doesn’t have an Uzi… he has a pipe bomb<\/em>!”<\/p>\n

I should also point out that I had\u00a0a very similar incident about 25 years ago.\u00a0 On this other occasion I was standing on line at the Manufacturer’s Hanover Trust on the corner of\u00a044th St. & Fifth Ave, when a joke that I had\u00a0recently added to my repertoire kept coming into my head.\u00a0 As is my custom, I was trying to get down the timing<\/em> of the joke. I kept going over its pauses and points of emphasis in my head.\u00a0 Gosh it’s real funny joke… and there I am standing on line, talking to no one else, clearly alone… and laughing in a rather obvious manner (did I tell you that it was a very funny joke?).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Well… this is\u00a0in New York.\u00a0 A rather big bank.\u00a0 And a rather large number of people were in there at the time.\u00a0 And unlike TD Bank North in Norwalk… this bank had a Guard with a side arm.\u00a0 And after a minute or two of laughing to myself, it was apparent that everyone who had been standing near me had moved several feet away… and I now had the bank dick standing 18″ in back of me, tapping me on the shoulder with his left hand, with his right hand poised on his revolver, asking, “Sir? Is there something wrong?”<\/p>\n

So I had to tell the Guard the joke.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I can’t recall if he thought the joke was as funny as I did… but I attribute that to his\u00a0sense of relief that I didn’t have an Uzi or\u00a0that I didn’t pee on the floor.<\/p>\n

This time, as I walked over to the coin-o-matic, chuckling pretty good, Marguerita, the teller with a friendly smile (who I see just about every week), catches sight of me, pauses for a minute… and she smiles, then she let’s out a giggle… I laugh a little more, then she laughs even more, and tries to stifle the next one… then the lawn maintenance guy standing at the counter he begins to laugh.\u00a0 Even the stick-in-the-mud manager sitting at his desk…he’s shaking his head and smiling, and then he begins to laugh, too.\u00a0 The entire place is laughing.\u00a0 And I am the only one who knows the commercial.<\/p>\n

Thank you YouTube for allowing me to share this.\u00a0 It’s a minute of pure creative genius.\u00a0<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=41Yl24z8b_c<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m thinking that I might not be alone in this “laughing-to-yourself-in-public” thing.\u00a0 And even if it hasn’t happened to you\u00a0before, it could<\/em> happen in the future.\u00a0 First, I recommend that you don’t<\/em> walk into a bank laughing if you are carrying a bazooka. Second, if you must laugh, I recommend that you have a brief joke or anecdote prepped that you can immediately<\/em> share, to allay the fears of the staring and concerned citizens that maybe nearby. \u00a0“Hah, hah, hah!\u00a0 I just remembered that I forgot to put my Grumpy Underoos in the wash!\u00a0 Hah, hah, hah”.<\/p>\n

Brief<\/em>, however, has never been my\u00a0forte<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The joke I told the guard:<\/p>\n

“There’s this business executive who commutes on the train.\u00a0 Greenwich to Grand Central in the morning, Grand Central to Greenwich in the evening.\u00a0 Every day, every week, every year.\u00a0 For him the train is his <\/em>time… neither at work dealing with problems, nor at home dealing with problems.\u00a0 He actually looks forward to being on the train!\u00a0 In the morning he reads the New York Times<\/em>, on the ride home The Wall Street Journal.<\/em><\/p>\n

“On one particular ride home, he was sitting in the “club seats” that face each other, deeply involved in his reading.\u00a0\u00a0Without his notice,\u00a0he is joined by an older teenager who sits opposite from him.<\/p>\n

“The train pulls out of Grand Central and when the conductor comes by to collect tickets, the executive lowers his paper, and takes note of the teenager across from him.<\/p>\n

“The boy has several tattoos, and piercings… ears, lower lip, right nostril, both eyebrows.\u00a0 Half is head is shaved, the other side is spiked up on top like a stegosaurus, with dreads cascading well below his\u00a0right shoulder.\u00a0The spikes are coloured purple and the dreads orange.<\/p>\n

“The executive stares silently at the kid, unable to go back to his reading.<\/p>\n

“The kid stares back.\u00a0 And finally says to the guy, ‘Hey, man!\u00a0 What ‘your starin’ at?'”<\/p>\n

“The executive takes off his reading glasses, ‘I’m staring at you!'”<\/p>\n

“And the kid says, ‘Hey!\u00a0What’s\u00a0buggin’ you? \u00a0Weren’t you young once?\u00a0 Hey, didn’t you do real exciting things when you were younger?\u00a0 Real fun and crazy things?'”<\/p>\n

“And the man says, ‘As a matter of fact I did. When I was your age, I fucked a parrot once.\u00a0 And what worries me is that maybe you’re my kid.'”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What could I do?\u00a0 Is it a crime to laugh?\u00a0 OK, so I was by myself… sort of.\u00a0 I was in Norwalk’s TD North Bank to take care of a couple of things.\u00a0 Just one person standing at the teller’s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ministry-of-jokes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=512"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":513,"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512\/revisions\/513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/summerofjim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}