Sense of humour failure

One thing I've noticed about being as busy as I have been lately is that I don't laugh as much as usual! Nor do I seem to make people laugh as much as I normally do. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not the funniest person in the world, but normally my brain seems to see the funny in most things and every now and then, normally without thinking what I am saying, I will say something which can make people laugh about a situation. This has got me into hot water on a number of occasions (good job I have spell check, I can never spell that word) as the not thinking bit tends to bypass the 'this is a stupid moment at which to crack a funny' part of my brain - so perhaps this is a measure of my growth in maturity rather than a reflection on my busy lifestyle.

Nahhhhhh, maturity is overrated.

There are Oases of humour within my life, though, my family are fun to be with, so there's lots of laughter there. I fell in love with my wife because she is so quick and funny, and that's not changed (either the being in love or the wife being quick and funny). I'm amazed how funny my kids can be, not just laughing at the things that kids do or finding out how odd some of the things we adults consider to be appropriate and normal, but how quickly they pick up on words and ideas that are genuinely amusing and know when to drop a certain word into conversation to make us all laugh. Both my daughter, aged five and a half and son aged two have very good senses of humour (or should that be sense of humours???) and like most kids love to play up to get laughs.

I have friends with whom I laugh a lot, and try to get out to the pub at least once a week to share stories and generally have fun. Whilst this does have a certain 'ministerial' aspect (I go in my clerical clothes and often have quite deep conversations with folk who would rarely set foot in a Church) i appreciate the opportunity for friendship and laughter.

So its not that I inhabit a world devoid of good humour, its just that I don't laugh as often as I have done. Maybe as life settles down into new working patterns over the next few months, with changes going on in our ministerial team, I'll get to laugh more again.

Before ending this post, I'll give an example of when engaging brain before opening mouth might have been a good idea.

I was at a meeting of a methodist group where we were being told the story of John Wesley, the great founder of Methodism. In his early life John had a number of interesting experiences as the son of an Anglican Vicar. There was certainly one occasion, maybe two, where the Vicarage where John and his family lived caught fire, with a suspicion of Arson to which I responded 'So he felt his house strangely warmed'.

I suspect you have to be a methodist to understand why this line fell so very flat with the speaker at that point.