I'm Not Particularly Nice, But I Am Funny...

I know. I seem so sweet in cyberspace.... I am a bit reluctant to share my Life is Funny story today. I don't mind laughing at my clumsiness, silliness, oddness, and a bunch of other stuff. But today the only thing I can bring to mind is the time I was really mean to someone at Church. And yes. I still laugh about it. This is not one of my bright and shining moments.

Anyway, I think I vaguely mentioned a while back that during college I was involved on the fringes of a cult. I went to my childhood Church on Sunday mornings, and to the other one on Sunday afternoons. Well, this young man at the Sunday afternoon Church was constantly talking down to me and a couple of my good friends.

He'd say things like "are those glasses that tint in the light for prescription, or just because you think it makes you look cool. You know, God doesn't want you to be concerned about appearances..." Not a Sunday went by where Jack didn't say something preachy like this to my friends or me.

Well, one day he delivers a message to someone at our campus Bible House. (Don't ask. Just. Don't. Ask.) I was studying scripture with my friend Dave. Jack comes up to us, and starts telling us this joke without a punch line. It was the joke that wouldn't end.

A woman goes into a restaurant and orders vanilla vegetables with her meal. When she can't have that, she wants to skip the meal for spinach ice cream. The joke did not make any sense, and he would go back and forth, because when she was told she couldn't have spinach ice cream, she was back to trying to order a meal with vanilla vegetables.

Dave and I just stared at Jack with our mouths open. Finally Jack had to leave. When we heard the outside door close, we just looked at each other, and went hysterical. The look on Dave's face was so funny, and I imagine the look on mine wasn't exactly stunning, but stunned. We had tears rolling down our faces...

Unfortunately, Jack left something in the Bible House, and he comes back in to find Dave and I both laughing so hard we are crying. Jack asks us what is so funny.

Not having the heart to tell him we are laughing at how stunned the other is by the stupidity of his joke, I look at him and say "VANILLA VEGETABLES!!!!! BWAHAHAHHAHHA!" as if I first got the joke after he left. That only made Dave laugh all the harder, especially since Jack not only believed we first got the joke, but was laughing, too "I know, right! Vanilla vegetables!"

Now, if the story ended here, I'm not sure it would make me so bad. I laughed at someone when I shouldn't have and covered it up when he caught us. It's not the worst thing I've done. Even though I was still laughing, I suspect I didn't tell him why we were laughing because I was ashamed in the first place.

However, remember how I said Jack had a tendency to act pompously during the fellowship after service? Well, every time Jack behaved pompously after that, I'd choose an elder in my head, and say to him "Do you know who hasn't heard your vanilla vegetable joke...." and take him by the arm to that particular Church leader. If I had quit one week later, I'd have had to walk him over to the pastor himself. (This Church had a lot of leaders....)

So, how is your life funny?