“Hey, Mom,” my teenage daughter, Christy, called from her bedroom doorway. “What’s one thing you’ve learned the hard way in life?”
Without looking up from my book, I quipped, “Never let your father fix my car!”
A chuckle sounded behind the Sunday paper. Two twinkling sea-green eyes glared at me in mock ferocity as Tim lowered the paper.
“Sheri, if you don’t watch out, I won’t change your oil this afternoon!”
“Thanks for warning me what you are planning,” I fired back.
Christy came into the living room. “My English teacher wants me to interview you and Dad, then write an essay on what you tell me. Did you really want me to answer the question that way?”
Of course,” I said. It seemed the safest answer to her question about things I’ve learned the hard way. It was absolutely true, too.
Tim is good at a great many things, but cars aren’t his specialty, even though he thinks they are.
Around midnight a few nights ago, we were fast asleep. Suddenly, a car’s horn began blaring. I sat up in bed. “Tim, is that one of your cars?”
“Humph?” he mumbled. “No. It’s the neighbor’s car.” He turned over and pulled his pillow over his head.
“Tim, the neighbors live a half mile away. That can’t be the neighbor’s car. My car would never do such a thing, so it must be one of yours. You’d better go check.”
Mumbling crossly, Tim dragged himself out of bed and stalked outside. I slithered out of bed and peeked through the window to watch.
Tim opened the back door. A blast of wind slammed it against the wall. Sticking his head outside, he glared at the blaring culprit. Sure enough, it was his old station wagon. Tim limped toward it across the sharp gravel.
“Ow! Ow!” he said, not being a swearing sort of man.
Just as he reached the car, the blaring horn stopped.
“Pull the plug, Tim. Pull the plug!” I whispered to myself.
Tim halted uncertainly, shrugged, and headed back to the house and plopped back into bed.
“Why didn’t you pull the plug on that horn?” I asked.
“It stopped.”
I lay back on my pillow and waited.
Sure enough, the wind picked up, roaring through the pine trees. Lightning flashed. Thunder rumbled.
That’s when the car’s horn began blasting again.
I knew it! That car had deliberately waited until all the elements were on edge before blaring again. (Don’t ever try to convince me cars and computers aren’t influenced by invisible forces. Our definitely are demonic. Particularly Tim’s.)
“Aaaack!” Tim shouted, throwing the covers back and racing back out to the car. Sharp stones poked his feet again. Wind blew his hair straight up. He lifted the car’s hood and jerked the wire connected to the horn. Silence. That’s when the rain hit.
Tim dropped the hood into place and dashed back into the house.
I smiled into my pillow as Tim changed into dry pajamas and climbed back into bed. It seems to be his destiny to do battle with his vehicles.
On the other hand, I take my cars to real mechanics, and my cars behave nicely.
I’ve picked up a lot of car knowledge from the men around me. It’s impossible not to. Every time something goes wrong with my car … and there’s always a man in the car at the time … all the male creatures in the vehicle, and maybe a few driving by on the road, will give their opinion about what’s wrong.
“It’s probably the starter.”
“Well, it might be a bad alternator.”
“Or the spark plugs.”
I’m convinced men do this to intimidate women. They never say anything useful.
So I sit there in panic trying to get the thing going. I’ve learned to ask the men to “get out and push and see if we can push-start it.” Then, when all the male creatures are outside the car, I can think clearly again. I check everything, and quietly do something like put the car in the right gear, turn the key, and voila, it starts.
Gratified that they could be helpful in push-starting my car, the men smile and walk away. Except for my man, who gets back into the car and suggests I get the vehicle tuned up.
I thank him for his help and don’t tell him what the real problem was. I feel too stupid. Besides, if he couldn’t have thought of checking the gear in the first place, he doesn’t deserve to know the truth.
I now drive an automatic. No more gear issues for me!
(Tune in next time for As The Wheel
Turns, Part 2.)
Humor is one of the multisensory tools you might want to add to your teaching or speaking work belt. Using humor to illustrate usually involves exaggeration. In this case, however, I told it like it really happened. (Of course, I usually see things from a funny point of view.) When speaking or writing, using humor to illustrate a point will help your audience relax and enjoy the story, as well as help people remember your what you said to them and, for some, it will help them remember your point … as long as your point relates to the humorous story you just told.
I would use a story like this in writing a piece about evaluating who you choose to speak into your life. Just as I would not take my car to someone without good mechanical skills, I would not take advice from someone without a good understanding of God and his ways.
Of course, this is a long lead-in to writing on the subject, unless one is writing a book. But it illustrates humor.
To write humor, one must tap into the Rule of Three: To make a person laugh, get them to start thinking of something in a certain way, then finish your illustration by switching to a different way of viewing the subject. Usually, that takes 3 leads going in one direction, then a 4th going a different direction.
In this story, I used only one serious lead, followed by a comic response.
Lead: “What’s one thing you learned the hard way?” (Implies a serious topic.)
Change direction: “Never let your father fix my car.” (Comic response.)
I will illustrate this Rule of Three again in my next blog post.