Found at: http://www.anguillaguide.com/article/articleprint/2980/-1/133/
|
HEARTICALLY YOURS: E-Jokes by Ijahnya Christian
|
One of the things I promised to stop doing after age 40 was to stop taking myself so seriously but in recent months I seem to have broken that promise more so than before and even on re-reading a few recent articles in this column, I could hear something like a funeral dirge in the background.
|
|
Ijahnya Christian
|
How could I be other than absolutely serious in the face of the terrible ills we’ve been experiencing – and not just our own but via the media, to other people’s. By now we should realize that Anguilla is another country in the world, experiencing the violence, the petty and the grand politics, the drugs, crime, the domestic violence, anxieties about the global trade regime and what small islands must do. In the face of all that Vanus James confirmed that we are doing some things right but emphasized the value of Further and Higher Education in every sphere in which we intent to maintain that competitive edge of excellence. I have not heard many positive comments about the moratorium on development but in my analysis and given the current circumstances, I believe that it is a wise and prudent decision that has been taken. I only wish that it had been taken in the context of a long-term development plan.
But you see what I mean – getting all serious on you when what I’m really trying to do is to get back on track and not take life so seriously all the time. My good friend Mr. Jonah keeps me abreast of all the news I miss when I get so busy that I cannot even listen to the news. Another friend chided me for including a news fast during Ramadan and missing more bad news but he does not know how badly I need to laugh. So today I really want to remember what it is like to have a good belly laugh, especially since I have the belly and though I may not succeed, maybe a chuckle or even a smile will do. As a 21st century woman, I have become victim to the tyranny of email. A mere ten days away from the computer and I will never again catch up so I won’t even try. What I do when hundreds of emails anxiously beckon and try to put me on some kind of a guilt trip, is to zoom in on those from my sister Ronnie and my good friend Ester, whose entire weekends are spent selecting e-jokes obviously written by a set of people just like us – they have no lives. How else would they find time to dream up all those jokes so they can be forwarded to me. Whatever the case I am really glad that someone out there knows that I need to laugh and even in the e-joke world I have noticed some trends.
First, is the competition that now exists between the Jamaica man and the Guyana man – remember the one who arrived in the US with his machete and explained to Immigration that he come to chop bush – that’s the man. The Jamaicans say he is from St. Elizabeth and the Guyanese say he is from Linden. If email was around during the days when we were St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, bet your life that man would have been a Bobo Johnny. Right now, that man is bound to be in a US jail and can’t get bail and you are left to wonder how he managed to get past all those terrorist busters to arrive in the US with a machete.
Then there are those letters from African offering hot deals for partnership in highly questionable ventures that are supposed to result in my getting a good percentage of the millions that somebody died and left, if only I would just say yes and provide my bank account number. These letters are not at all funny in their intent but sometimes funny in their explanations. Last week I received three of them. The first one was so full of the Holy Ghost that it sounded like an invitation to thief in the name of the Lord. As we all know, tief from tief mek God laugh so even in the absence of the best policy, laughter is possible. The other two prospectors claimed to be employees in an African Bank. I wrote back to tell them that they making the name of the bank look real bad and since they didn’t know me – they called me Mr., I could well be the police so please don’t write to me anymore. That’s the beauty of a vacation – you have time to answer spam and to take a break from all the serious stuff, in favour of exchanging e-jokes.
Before I share the e-joke of the week with you, I have to confess that the e-joke is a way of letting someone know that they at least crossed your mind and it is conveys the impression that you’re keeping in touch. The other advantage for people like me, who can’t tell jokes, is that you don’t have to tell them. You can just forward them or print them and put them on the wall. A third advantage is that some people do not use the blind copy facility and so the joke is forwarded a hundred times, through a hundred different groups but when your name in among those on the sender’s list, you get hold of the email address of your cousin’s best friend’s brother that you had a serious crush on at some point during high school but whose very existence you had forgotten till the receipt of that much-forwarded e-joke.
Here are three short ones on old age that I can identify with at my age and I hope you haven’t seen them before.
1. I feel like my body has gotten totally out of shape, so I got my doctor’s permission to join a fitness club and start exercising. I decided to take an aerobics class for seniors. I bent, twisted, gyrated, jumped up and down, and perspired for an hour. But, by the time I got my leotards on, the class was over.
2. Reporters interviewing a 104-year-old woman: “And what do you think is the best thing about being 104?” the reporter asked. She simply replied, “No peer pressure.”
3. THE SENILITY PRAYER - Grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.