TWENTY FUNNY
STORIES
BOOK 1
By Margaret Radisich Sleasman
Published by Margaret Radisich Sleasman at Smashwords
Copyright: 2010 Margaret Radisich Sleasman:
All Rights Reserved
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Dedication
This book is dedicated to my family, relatives, and the Croatian friends in the community in which I grew up. The Croatian sense of humor is probably the best in the world as far as I am concerned. We may be a strange group at times, but have a zest for life unparallel to any other nationality that I have met.
None of these stories are true; maybe a sentence or two and then I enlarged it to my viewpoint. I hope that others will chuckle and not find my writing insulting, that was not my intent.
After you read these stories, you will know without a doubt what you suspected all along, I am totally insane. Laughter extends your life, so laugh with me or at me; God bless you all.
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Forward:
I never knew I was Funny
I went through most of my life never knowing I was funny. I discovered I had a little “funny” talent when I was 66 years old. Up until then, I had a sense of humor, but did not really know I was capable of making people laugh. All this time, I thought others were laughing because they were mocking me. I truly enjoy good humor, but never cared for slapstick or the Three Stooges type where they are hitting each other to get laughs. All I could think about was, “Boy that must have hurt!”
I believe stress can cause a person to either, fall into depression, go insane or lean towards seeing humor in a situation. In my case, a little insanity is a good thing and the stress brought out humor instead of depression. One day I read a short humor article and thought to myself, “I can do this,” so I began to type. Oh my, the feedback started coming in; either they thought it was funny or that I was insane. A new career was born; I could look at my husband, myself, various members of my family and stories would just pop into my head.
My family and friends have distanced themselves a bit because they are afraid I will write about them; my husband thinks I am making fun of him (but actually doesn’t mind), and my kids are extremely happy that I may have added a few years to my life.
Granted, these stories are mostly NOT true, but the little bit that is gets my mind going and somehow turns into a funny situation and makes me laugh. I have no idea how this happens, but I am happy that it does. My cholesterol count has gone down, the headaches left, and each time something stressful happens in my life; I write a funny story. This does not make the situation go away, but it makes it much easier to deal with.
The old “apple a day” theory has been changed to a “funny story a day” for me. Laughing does improve your health and your outlook on life; or maybe I have just gone crazy and don’t know it yet.
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1 - Life Lessons learned from Dogs
This story could be called adventures with electric dog collars; however, it falls under the category of life lessons learned from a dog. The dog maybe did not teach the lesson, but if it wasn’t for the dog, there would have been no lesson to learn. All husbands take note here, because those of you willing to go to any length to make your spouse happy, may want to draw the line at this one.
My good friend acquired a very small dog; she was visiting the local shelter and her eyes locked with very sad brown eyes of a mixed breed. With a little attention, the dog responded with panting and tail-wagging so she decided that was the pet for her. Unfortunately, animal shelters do not tell you the bad habits of animals that they adopt out, the stories are always that the people had to move and could not take the dog with them making the situation more pitiful than it actually was.
It seems that this particular dog was very outspoken in a doggie sort of way and never, ever stopped barking. It barked when it was happy, sad, mad, hungry, and any other reason that floated into its tiny brain. My friend was beside herself as what to do and her husband was angry (since he was on shift-work and could not get any sleep) the neighbors were also getting increasingly verbal towards them, and threatened to call the police.
The husband went to the local pet store and purchased a collar that was not only guaranteed to stop the barking, but would not harm the animal in any way. He happily brought his purchase home thinking he did his good deed for the day and his wife would be pleased. Not so, she sprayed him with words he did not know that she even knew and he was in big trouble.
What does a man do when trying to make amends? In this case, he was going to prove to his wife that “in no way would this collar harm an animal,” and offered to put the collar on himself to show her that his heart was in the right place.
After putting the little AAA batteries in, he carefully put the collar on his neck and invited her to press the shock button. She did, and he felt nothing. “Maybe the batteries are in wrong, no, they are correct; well here we can adjust the power of the shock, maybe it is not strong enough.” He moved the power up to medium dog and felt a little buzz, but nothing that would bother him. He was in the process of telling her that, “See, it definitely won’t hurt the dog,” when she moved the power up to big dog. ZAP! A minute or so later, he woke up on the floor unable to control his arms or legs let alone to speak. She was standing above him, smiling and all he could do was pray that she wasn’t out for revenge for every mistake he made in their married life.
My friend figured he had learned his lesson with one ZAP and didn’t pursue the matter further, of course she was satisfied with the test, which proved to her that this collar was NOT going on her pet and she planned to hire a “Dog Whisperer” to train her baby. In the meantime her husband took the collar back to the store trying to explain the reason for the return with stuttering, incomprehensible language as he wiped the drool from his numb lips. They did hire a “Dog Whisperer” who trained the dog and the barking has stopped, the neighborhood is back to normal, the husband is no longer in trouble, my friend is happy except for her husband’s occasional drooling when he is under stress.
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2 - Depression
My husband does not believe in depression, he thinks it means being sad - so get over it. I have proof that it does not mean just being sad, but is; in fact, a real disease. You need to know that most of the relatives on my mother's side, me and my children are ADHD, so from the start, we think differently than normal people. Here is where one person's normal may be another person's insanity; nevertheless, I am going to tread boldly into what I think I might know.
My mother had SAD which is a form of depression that has to do with the lack of sunlight. Being too cheap to buy the imitation sun light; she was SAD all her life - except in the summer when we would get the occasional day that was not gloomy and rainy. My dad died early on, so he missed all this and the only thing I knew about him is that he was very happy; yes, he drank,
But he did not need the alcohol to make him happy – he just was.
My brother was an alcoholic and my sister was a paranoid schizophrenic. Out of my five children there were two that were drug users and alcoholics, one died of an overdose, and one could go at any moment (we no longer hear from her). Her daughter was born with fetal alcohol syndrome, several other diagnosis and lives in a group home 300 miles away. Two more of my children are ADHD, obsessive compulsive, and one of them is germ-phobic. The fifth child suffers from mild clinical depression, although a happy child in younger days, he is the one who got the disease. The doctor said it is a disease and he would know because he had training in that field.
With that pedigree, you would think I would be depressed too; my whole family seems to be falling apart and there is no quick fix; there isn't even a lengthy fix. If depression was a state of mind rather than a disease, I would be greatly depressed at my life's disasters; but since it is a disease, I can sail through life un-depressed and, for the most part, happy.
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My husband is the only normal person in my family and the effects of our situations have made him grumpy, but not depressed. Probably because I have convinced him that we are no more dysfunctional than any other family (he is gullible too). Most normal people would be at least concerned; but being ADHD, I can look at life with a paper sack over my head and ignore the bad stuff. I have also developed quite a sense of humor, at least I think I have a sense of humor; being ADHD, I may never really know for sure. I would think that the college of psychoanalysis would like to do several case studies on our family, but no offers have come forth, maybe we are normal after all.
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3 - Selling Your Novel on the Internet
Not being a famous movie star or a criminal (who, in order to get published, doesn't even have to know how to write), the chance of getting anything published, for me, is pretty slim. I tried, I really did. I spent three years writing a bible-word study and it had enough pages to qualify as a book. My rejection letters came: It was good, but that topic was already covered. It may have been covered, but my view wasn't covered; so I could not understand their thinking. I am pretty sure they didn't even read it or they would have begged me for the opportunity to publish such a marvelous book. Finally, I gave up and self-published; the company I went with designed a gorgeous cover that would attract buyers, but still nothing. They listed it on Amazon, Barns & Noble and other places I've never heard of and in six years I got three sales.
I see that Amazon has my book listed and there are several in the "used" category. If I didn't sell any, how can they be in the used category? Thinking back, I did give a few copies away to friends and a few to book stores, hoping to promote it. These people who got my free books are making more on them than I did. Especially considering that I had to pay $8 for each book that I generously gave away - they paid nothing, and they are the ones making a profit on my hard work; nice, real nice.
I am disappointed, but tough, so I put it on Kindle. I am not sure who in the heck can afford a Kindle in the first place, I know I can’t and I am an author – well, sort of. So being dumb as a stump, I wrote a humorous family-history book and also put it on Kindle - no, it is not selling either – but Kindle is the wave of the future, so it could sell at any moment! Then I heard of blogs and Google ads for blogs; wow, if people read my blog, I would make money if they clicked on the ad. I might not sell my books (which are also listed on my blog), but at least I would make a few cents on the Google ads. Apparently, I have the curse of the black lagoon hanging over my head blocking all money from getting into my hands. I finally got disgusted with Google and deleted their ads, so now I just have a few little blogs that I no longer keep up-to-date because no one ever sees or cares about them anyway.