A healthy sense of humor is priceless.

I don’t mean the kind that makes you laugh at a good joke, although that one’s useful, too.  A good belly laugh can work wonders when you’re digging yourself out of the third crisis of the day.

Nope, I’m talking about the ability to laugh at myself.  That hasn’t always been a strong suit of mine, but it turns out this particular skill is extraordinarily helpful when it comes to keeping the blood pressure low.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m probably underselling it just a wee bit when I say I haven’t always been able to laugh at myself.  One might say I used to be a little, well, uptight about looking foolish.  High strung wouldn’t be too far off the mark either, not when it came to my screw-ups, with reactions being directly proportional to how public my mistake was.

Shocking, right?  I mean, it sounds like I had a real stick up my butt…which I know comes as a complete surprise to those of you who’ve met me in my (ahem) later years.

BrightSide was a big part of my rehabilitation in this particular area of personal development.  I distinctly remember his first intervention.  Well, maybe not so distinctly because I can’t remember what I did, but knowing me it was probably something like tripping on a step or dropping a plate of food.  At any rate, I clearly remember a millisecond of silence while heat flooded my face (my instinctive reaction to accidents) followed by BrightSide’s riotous laughter.

I looked up at him in shock with a furious, “Are you laughing?!”  Which only made him laugh harder, eventually gasping out an apology when he saw that I was actually upset.  Once he’d collected himself BrightSide explained he’d always reacted this way, he’d learned it growing up, and if somebody gets hurt (not HURT hurt but stupid hurt) it’s pretty much a guarantee he’ll be snickering.  If we’re talking Three Stooges type mishaps there will be guffaws involved.

I can certainly attest to this since I have a long history of bizarre mishaps that BrightSide found hysterical.  Like the time I played tennis with him, somehow managing to ricochet the ball off my racket’s rim and into my own head.  Or the time I was struck by nature’s call while we were stuck in some endless no man’s land on a road trip, eventually forced to agree that the woods roadside were indeed preferable to peeing in the car.  Unfortunately, the July swampiness of that particular area led to a delightful hour of watching forty mosquito bites swell up on my legs.

I could go on, but you get the point.  Frequent source of comic relief right here.

After about fifteen years – hey, I never said I was a quick learner – I began to get the hang of it. This was also when the flaw in BrightSide’s plan revealed itself since the oh my gosh, are you okay? Laura was replaced by the snorts and giggles Laura, making me seem much less sympathetic.  But hey, I’m busy growing as a person over here.

Last month’s photography incident was a perfect example.  T-man and sista-friend were busy feeding fish in the lake.  (And by “feeding fish” I mean “holding Goldfish crackers in the water and squealing happily as fish nibbled at them.”)  I was crouched on the dock, happily taking pictures, and decided to move to the other side to shoot some more.

Cue slo-mo action reel as I stood to walk around and simply fell down.

That’s right – no obstacle to trip over, nothing jumping out to startle me.  I was in the act of standing when the world abruptly tilted as I fell to my knees.

My first thought?  Thank God, I didn’t drop the camera in the lake!  The second?  OW! OW! OW!  The third?  Oh my God, how old am I?!  I just fell down STANDING UP!  Bwahahahaha!!!

I figure it’s progress.

My entry as part of Colline’s Gratitude Project.