It occurred to me tonight after having a fun filled Weds night laughter class; to jot down what it's like to share joy with other people. There's an amazing feeling I get when my classes or audiences really "get" the healing power of laughter. It feels like everyone's light goes on and you see it all with a smile on their faces and a light in their eyes. That excitement that a crowd can share just by having a unified laughter exercise to do together, brings out this energy I can only equate to manifesting the law of creation. When we visualize an outcome, it gives us the space to create it. It all falls into place. I do this before my program and it works. Sometimes life is just that easy. Perhaps a bit esotheric for a Weds evening, but fascinating just the same.
June 28, 2006
June 08, 2006
Badger Hand
I wrote this a few weeks ago to honor my dog Badger who both my parents and I raised in love and laughter.
Enjoy, Gail
Badger Hand, our beloved Sealyham terrier ran off to heaven yesterday afternoon.
He was almost 15 yrs old.
Badger was born in Colorado with a long name that started with “Uno”. When I met him after he moved to San Francisco, he lived with my neighbor Rick who was an airline pilot for United. Rick left him for 10-12 hrs at home a lot in a cage. I used to hear him whine in his apt and convinced Rick and his boyfriend to let me adopt him. One time when my parents came to visit they saw that my garbage disposal had the word “badger” on it and thought I named him after the sink. Quite frankly I don’t remember. He also answered to “Muffin Boy” and “Scruffy”or the shake of a leash when he was little.
For a year Badger traveled all around California with me in my Jeep when I was a sales rep. He met coffee retailers who greeted him with water and Milk bones though like his mother Gail he preferred tea over coffee..
Badger was my team’s mascot when I coached a youth softball team in San Francisco
He also cheered for the Bay to Breakers on more than one occasion. It was so hot that May I got him a summer cut early so he looked like half a Sealyham..
Badger was allowed to sit on the bema in a San Francisco Temple that my girlfriend Janice ran. The only dog to this day who proudly held this honor. She gave me this statue of a Jewish Sealyham Terrier.
Badger then moved to L.A. with me and soon after was adopted by my parents (living the life of Reilly) at the beach in San Clemente, where he lived there for 7 years with his brothers Skippy, Bear and sister Smokey. 
He became devoted to my parents for the next 12 years. and they to him. Badger LOVED to dig at the beach and walked on the trail by the railroad tracks many a day with my parents.
When my brother Bruce got married in Guerneville in 1995 Badger was in atten
Eight years later he moved to Reno where he enjoyed the mountains and snow half the year. He had a next door neighbor (West Highland Terrier) named Mattie he adored. His feline sister Allie came along soon after and they lived their lives happily with my parents another 8 years in Reno until moving to Oregon last year during the worst snowstorm of the century. My friend Jo carried 33lb badger out and I don’t know when I have ever laughed so hard. We could hardly see with the blinding snow, but Badger was happy as a clam. If I could attach the video of that day I would. In Oregon, he recently acquired a Lab brother named Zach who he tolerated. He came to love Allie and kissed her hello almost every day.
Badger loved being petted often, he loved the beach, the mountains, but he especially loved the car. In the end he didn’t even care if it was moving, he just liked being in the car.
Sometimes our love of travel stays with us until our final trip.
I hope that Badger is riding along in a car with his head stuck out the back window, wind blowing in his face surrounded by a pile of milk bones.
June 06, 2006
Humor and Injury
It occurred to me last night while I was doing a humor workshop with 15 awesome people that I might be what they call a topical expert on dark humor. Humor is subjective of course, but in my family the hardest topics eventually hit the list of topics to lighten up about. Usually it's my highly educated Barnard graduate mother and I lauging at someone's latest misfortune. But in the end we are sharing our view of the irony not laughing AT the person's misfortune.
You see all of my immediate family have either fallen, had surgery, or have been bitten by an animal and swelled up like a possum on steroids in the past 2 months. The way to deal with this irony is with humor. You just need to find someone who shares your perspective and understands you are not poking fun of the person- just wondering what karma they are working on just now. Some illness is just not funny, and yet there is humor in every affliction and situation- eventually.
Allen Klein, one of my mentors and colleagues in the humor field writes about Circle Humor in his book The Courage to Laugh. He reminds us that when a group of people laugh about something difficult they are going through (like Chemo) that laughter will give them the respite they need from their difficult situation together. My life has always been about circle humor. My mother and I make the full circle. Between us we have lost 40 friends, dogs and cats through our years together.
In fact she is my step mother, my birth mother died when I was a toddler. At last count I had lost 26 people- that's a lot of death to deal with. Many people were young when they died and I cried for many years before I ever thought there was anything remotely funny about losing a good friend or relative. Alas the heart heals and then our memories kick in about the fun we had with our dear ones. That's when the true healing happens for me. Laughter heals. We always have a choice how to handle our stresses. For me, laughter, tears and chocolate pretty much make life a piece of cake, bitterweet chocolate of course.
