Let Your Silly Self Emerge

In a recent blog post, Vicki over at Not So SAHM was lamenting the loss of her “silly” side, her general inability to “get her silly on.”

It can be challenging, that’s for sure. Times are tough. Anxiety is high while optimism is low. Definitely hard to get silly in the wake of everything that is going on in the world in between paying bills, working overtime to do it, raising your kids, caring for aging parents (or in some cases, both) and wondering if you’ll have a job just to keep it all together.

But, if you’re me, you get an email that really brightens things up. It lets you know that Scrapbook Escape, or as we’ve come to call it “crop camp,” is all set. The annual scrapbooking weekend – which puts about two dozen women with all their scrapbooking gear and a whole lot of snacks in a hotel for two days and two nights in January – is a virtual hotbed of silliness. See what I mean?
Two steps back to explain. Shortly before crop camp this year, my good friend KayO sent me a link to the Friends’ quiz to find out which Friends’ character you are most like. I shared this with my cropping buddies, the MonkeyGirl, M, K, and J. Oddly enough, without telling each other who we came up with, we ALL came up with CHANDLER! (Except for J, who came up with Rachel. She ultimately rethought one or more responses, retook the quiz and came up with, what else, CHANDLER.)

It was too late though. I’d already long since embarked on my adventure into silliness by making Chandler masks and a Rachel mask for our weekend. (I’m generally armed with some sort of surprise at each of these events. It’s one of the many things I contemplate year-round on long bus rides.) So think me odd for creating it ... but my friends were willing enablers AND accomplices! Silly rules.

The blog has given me yet another venue to display this silliness as well as a new feature: a countdown clock! As you read this, you can glance near the upper right corner and see just how much time is left until the Superbowl of Silliness officially kicks off.

But that's just one side of my silly. The mother and I cannot walk past a display of those swimming noodles -- the giant foam tube things -- without challenging each other to a duel. I have no idea how this started. It's just one of those rare piece of pure silly the mother and I share. But imagine the silliness of two grown women in the middle of a store squaring off with foam noodles ...

Or how my godmother and the mother and I greet one another: "Eyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!" (Not a Fonzie Ayyyyyy. More like a Heyyyyyyyyyy sans the H.)

Or how I sing parts of certain commercials to Ozzie. (Red Robin. YUMMMMM!) And he responds by going completely spastic.

It's just a collection of stupid little things that make me laugh. Sometimes, they make other people laugh, too. Laughter truly is the best medicine. And our psyches need a regular dose of it.

So break out your own silliness … regularly. Life is short. Cherish your inner silly self, and in particular, all those who nurture it. I know I do.