Rough Stone Rolling

Life. You end up laying a lot of things at your own door that you didn’t plan on. Bad decisions. They didn’t tell you that you can steal your own life. Skimming a little here and there.There’s repentance, that’s nice. They call it a “do-over.” There are no do-overs in life, not really. A do-over is getting to make the same attempt for the same point, and doing it better. But how can you do a do-over when the first bonehead play is long in the past? All you can hope for is that the rest of your actions and decisions will pay back for what was stolen. Repentance or not, some part of me has never quit wishing I could go back.

On a different note.

A favorite film, Miller’s Crossing, was on TV again the other night. I happened to switch it on just when the “O, Danny Boy” scene started: Albert Finney takes on a couple of thugs carrying Thompson SMGs. With every step, Finney manages to get the upper hand. Then, an outrageous moment: Finney is drilling a thug with a tommy gun. The thug’s finger is locked on his own machine gun’s trigger and the force of his bullets hitting the floor keeps his body up on its feet– as Finney keeps pumping more and more bullets into his body. All the while, “O, Danny Boy”– sung by a heart-breaking tenor on a Victrola in Finney’s bedroom– fills the scene, even when the battle is taken outside. Gruesome scene. But it gets me to laughing.

Another moment: In the early 70’s, the good people from National Lampoon magazine released an issue with a photo of a hand holding a gun to the head of a worried-looking dog. The caption: Buy This Magazine or the Dog Gets It! The issue was a best-seller.

Why are these things funny? It’s weird what we choose to laugh at. I got dirty looks in the theater when I laughed once during Schindler’s List. How could I explain to them that I was laughing at the buffoonery of the Nazis?

Perhaps what we call humor was best explained in the classic Robert Heinlein novel, “Stranger in a Strange Land.” A young man raised by aliens on another planet returns to Earth for the first time and observes how earthlings behave, interact, react to experiences, etc. One observation he makes (and I’m paraphrasing here) is that the things we find to be funny are actually incredibly sad. Like men being shot to smithereens but unable to lay down, I guess.

I wonder how humor will translate into the next life. Our spiritual genetics come from Heavenly Father, but we seem to gather an awful lot of other junk in our make-ups that don’t appear to resemble Him at all. Will we appreciate irony? Do we see comedy in a situation even when it’s due to someone’s misfortune? Probably not. I remember hearing an apocryphal story about a custodian working in the temple one night, hearing laughter coming from the Holy of Holies. Concerned, he waits around until Brigham Young emerges, grinning. “Is everything all right, Pres. Young?” the man asks. “Oh, everything’s fine, brother. The Lord just told me a humorous story.” Or something like that. I would have loved to have heard that story– not only to learn what the Lord finds funny, but find out what makes Brigham Young laugh.

I think people tend to love their own senses of humor. It’s a stamp of who they are, what individualizes them. It also makes sense that we will be expected to eschew the inappropriate elements of our humor to achieve exaltation. Does this mean anything black or quirky is verboten? Will our senses of humor be benevolent and unified?

I sure hope not.