Laughing at Ourselves

When we take ourselves too seriously, we can get into some serious mental drama.  I think pride is something that we all struggle with to a certain degree, but for anyone with any kind of impairment, pride can take over our daily lives pretty quickly.One way I like to guard against this is to laugh at myself.  Of course, there are times when certain incidents are so embarrassing that I can’t see the humor in them for quite awhile (i.e. that garage sale, speaker-selling incident from my last post!)  But there are other mishaps that I immediately find funny.  For instance….

I was at a neighborhood pool with some friends a few days ago, and I took my friend’s son, Luke, to go down the water slide.  As Luke climbed the ladder to the slide, I positioned myself at the bottom of the slide. I was a little nervous because the force of the water was pretty strong at the bottom– definitely strong enough to pull a little kid under.  Plus, the roaring sound of the water was deafening, and since I rely on my sense of hearing so much, I felt even more impaired.  Thinking that Luke’s turn to come down the slide was next, I placed myself directly at the bottom of the slide, ready to catch him.

What I failed to see 10 feet above me was that there was another, much larger boy in front of Luke.  So as my arms reached out to catch my friend’s little 5-year-old boy, I was shocked to find myself catching a teenage boy (although I doubt I was as shocked as he was by the look on his face.)

To make myself feel better, I thought about how I would rather be embarrassed nearly wrapping my arms around a 15-year-old than failing to catch my friend’s little boy!  (And for the record, the next time he went down, I had him yell down as loud as he could right before his turn!)