I love Thanksgiving and taking time to feel grateful for the blessings in my life.
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Over the years I’ve come to appreciate that having a good sense of humor is an essential trait. Several years ago I copied down this quote which I recently found in the notes section of my phone: “Those who lack humor are without judgement and should be trusted with nothing.” Clive James said, “A sense of humor is just common sense.”

A good laugh is the source of great relief. It can break through awkward moments, lighten discomfort, signal sheer delight.

In first year acting class (my sophomore year), we learned to laugh and cry on cue. It was just a matter of changing breathing patterns (of course, actually feeling the emotions of the scene, or using “Method” acting techniques and drawing on memories from one’s life experience could be more valid, but the other technique worked well too). Then we were told to find a scene partner, go up on stage and, well…just laugh!

Pam and I bought “Mad” magazines, sat next to each other on stage and read them. Soon we laughed our heads off. My roommate Nettsie and close friend Michael were up next. They sat close like two conspirators, heads together whispering, pointing at me sitting out in the audience, and they giggled away.

After, I asked what about me had caused so much hilarity. They said they were pointing at my chest and Michael said, “Look, Betsy’s left boob fell off!”

Oh my…improv, I guess. Whatever…

For some, the slapstick of The Three Stooges does it every time. The morning of our wedding, Dan and his brother watched cartoons in their hotel room. I gather it lightened the tension. Slapstick doesn’t do it for me.

I have a witty friend, with a twinkle in his eye, who can crack me up like no one else. He astonishes me with the quickness of his mind and can make me laugh just by calling me, hanging up and calling me again. Peels of laughter. The weight of the world falls away. It does feel good to laugh.

Early Woody Allen movies were hilarious and we looked forward to them (before he was “cancelled” for being a creep and became persona non grata). Looking back, those early/best works were “Play it Again, Sam”, “Sleeper,” “Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask”, and of course, “Annie Hall”. We howled with laughter the first time we saw “Annie Hall”, saw it again, and laughed at everything we missed the first time, because we had been laughing so hard we missed so much. The third time we realized how truly bittersweet it was. Suddenly, it wasn’t so funny; we saw the nuance of the story, not just the punchlines and it took its place in the annals of one of the classics (and won the Oscar for Best Picture; well, la-di-da).

I enjoy watching “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert”. While he often tackles difficult, political topics, which are not funny, he can puncture them in a way that relieves my stress and sometimes brings the situation into high relief for the insanity that abounds. Other times, he just has fun. He has one on-going segment with his field producer and the producer’s mother, who is not sophisticated, but game. They put her in absurd situations and the results are laugh-out-loud hilarious. One such segment aired a few weeks ago. Not only did I howl, I told my family about it on Thanksgiving, found it on YouTube and we all screamed with laughter again.

Several times over the years, Colbert had wondered if sex parties were real. He has never been invited to one, though he’d been in show business for years, so he doubted they were a thing. Well, after the last public complaint, he said the invitations had poured in, and he sent his producer, Jake, and Jake’s mother, Bootsie, out to investigate. But Jake had told his mother that they were meeting Nobel laureate, and man she had formerly interviewed: Paul Krugman. They were supposed to have dinner with him. Bootsie had really enjoyed the former segment. She found that Krugman didn’t talk down to her, was a gentleman and she had a bit of a crush on him, so she was really excited. Her assignment now (she thought) was to ask him about the debt ceiling. However, they actually went to a sex party. The results were beyond hilarious.

https://youtu.be/l54g8rlD78E

These are a few moments that have captured my fancy or tickled my funny bone and allowed me some comic relief.

 

 

 

This prompt gave me the opportunity to write about my pediatrician, Dr.Elizabeth Torrey Andrews. In a weird coincidence, I googled her and discovered an obituary in the Reed College magazine, the college my younger son graduated from. Dr. Andrews was only a Reedie for one year (1923), then transferred to the University of Oregon, following her father (who was, incidentally, Reed’s first biology professor) when he accepted a position there. She attended the University of California Medical School, Berkeley, then earned an MD from Johns Hopkins University in 1927, specializing in pediatrics.

By the time our paths crossed in the 1950s, Dr. Andrews had worked at Bellevue Hospital in New York and taught at NYU. She published an article in the American Journal of the Diseases of Children based on her research in the “bacteriology, epidemiology, and pathology of pneumonia.” She was married and had two sons, who moved with her to Berkeley in 1940. She held  a position as a physician for the WPA nursery schools in Alameda County, and during WWII she worked part time in the local health department: Rosie the physician.

She joined the Kaiser Permanente Medical Group in Richmond, my home town, in 1950. I remember her as having grey hair, horn-rimmed glasses, a raspy voice, and always wearing a skirt and high heels. She had a no-nonsense approach to medicine and did not suffer fools (or hovering parents) gladly. And I’m sure this attitude made her great at what she did, including starting a teenage clinic. (She retired in 1973, the year I got  married!) Her death is listed as April 16, 2000. My best guess is that she was around 95 years old.

The last time I saw Dr. Andrews, she was sitting on a bench on Russell St. in the Elmwood district of Berkeley. She was quite old by this time, and I believe she was smoking a cigarette. I approached her, as I’m sure hundreds of her patients had done over the years, and introduced myself. She nodded and smiled and didn’t disagree when I said, “I bet you don’t remember me, but I was your patient…” Considering that I had a near concussion, two broken arms, allergies, tonsillitis, pneumonia, and occasional bouts of croup–she might have remembered me, but I’ll never know. She was my doctor until I was in my early teens, and I had great respect and affection for her, despite her sometimes gruff manner. I couldn’t imagine her being anyone’s wife or mother, the way children often feel about their teachers. She was simply Dr. Andrews, and probably lived at the hospital.

Dr. Andrews must have been a force to be reckoned with to have accomplished all she did during her lifetime. The Reed obituary also mentioned that she was “an elected member of the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee for many years,” and that she “traveled extensively throughout Central America and Europe.”

I wonder how many times she broke the glass ceiling in her professional career. I can see her now: white coat, high heels, red lipstick applied in a slapdash manner (probably smeared from her last puff on a cigarette), looking at me over her glasses and telling me to say “ahhh.” I wonder what she thought of this mischievous, accident-prone little girl she took good care of for so many years. Even though she didn’t (couldn’t possibly) remember me, during that chance encounter in Berkeley I wanted her to know I remembered her and was grateful to her for being my doctor. I’m glad I got the chance to tell her.

 

The Corpse in the Office 

I grew up in the Bronx on a tree-lined street that bordered the beautifully designed and landscaped housing complex called Parkchester.  (See The Puppy in the Waiting Room,  Magnolia, The Story of a Garden, and Parkchester, Celebrate Me Home)

There were seven or eight stores on our street,  a bar called The White Gander,  and several private houses with ground floor offices.   My dad had his medical practice in one of those offices and we lived “over the store”  in what we thought was the nicest house on the block,  with two beautiful magnolia trees in front.

Other than the occasional rowdy crowd spilling out of The While Gander,  ours was a quiet street,  but at times the doorbell would ring well after office hours and my dad would go down to deal with one emergency or another.

As family legend has it,  once the bell rang about 2:00 in the morning.  My sister and I slept on the third floor and didn’t hear it,  but it woke my folks a floor below,  and down went my father to answer the door.

Later when he came back to bed my mother was asleep,  and it wasn’t until breakfast the next morning that she asked him what had happened.

Between spoonfuls of oatmeal my dad explained.   “Two fellows coming out of The White Gander late last night saw a man lying on the sidewalk.  When they tried to rouse him he was unresponsive,  and so seeing my shingle they rang the bell.”

”My goodness,  what was the matter with him?”. asked my mother.

“I wasn’t sure until we carried him into my office,” my father said,  “but once we put him on the examining table I could see that he was dead.  In fact after breakfast I’ll have to call the medical examiner to pick up the body.” 

”You mean he’s still down there?”  my sister and I cried almost in unison.

”Well”,  said my dad, “there was no point doing anything about it at 2 AM.”

”But how could you leave a dead man lying down there all night while your wife and children were sleeping right upstairs!”  demanded my mother.

”There was nothing to worry about,”   my father said,  “the poor guy couldn’t get off the table.”

We realized of course my dad was right,  and when he finished his breakfast he went downstairs to the office to call the coroner.

Just as he predicted the corpse was still there.

– Dana Susan Lehrman