While Peter had cancer and was receiving treatments either for the cancer or for the side effects caused by the treatments, he wrote on the www.caringbridge.org website.  What a great service that website provides people battling a variety of illnesses.

Here is one of Peter’s stories about having to prepare for a procedure that required a clean colon.

The only real humor out of the last 48 hours was my decision to undertake the internal cleansing at my son’s house thirty miles away from my home. The plan was to start the process at 3:00 p.m. and be all done by 8:00 p.m. so I could pick up my brother from the airport on the way home. This plan was not approved with my sister-in-law who is a nurse. She was later horrified that anyone would attempt the cleansing process away from home. It was supposed to be a 20-minute process according to the pharmacist. Not with Peter. I drank the liquid at 3:10 p.m. and expected it would be just like a commercial for Drano. The hours ticked by with no hint of action. By 5:00 I was worried. By 6:00 I was frantic. Fortunately, my brother called and his flight was delayed so he would rent a car and see me in the morning. I still have to get home with a very messy time bomb in my gut. By 6:30 we had some action and it continued every 20 minutes until I had to leave. The 30 minute trip was potentially too long to spare the upholstery in the car. So, being ever clever and highly resistant to public humiliation, I whipped out a garbage bag, punched holes for my feet and pulled on an ersatz diaper. My son was laughing so hard he could not breathe and insisted there be no light on the front porch on my departure to reveal my very uncool behavior. I made it about 5 miles when there were rumblings. Ok, think about something else. Baseball, NAFTA, voter registration by party in rural Alabama, anything. It worked and I sailed on accelerating to cut the time. Then visions of me appearing on “Cops” started and I pictured myself getting out of the vehicle wearing a garbage bag diaper for the camera. That sounded worse than anything else so I slowed down. Then I started to think how I would get out of the car at home in case the diaper’s purpose was fulfilled. I couldn’t park on the inclined driveway for fear of leakage and couldn’t get out normally for the same reason. The proposed solution was to sort of fall out of the seat sideways and take my chances on leakage. Then I would sneak around the side of the house, remove the offending garments and knock on the glass sliding door. My wife was spared all of this as nothing untoward happened. She later told me that she had visions of a very unpleasant cleanup job on the vehicle in the morning.

submitted by FOCM Member Stuart Munson

Joe was a single guy living at home with his father and working in the family business.  When he found out he was going to inherit a fortune when his sickly father died, he decided he needed to find a wife with whom to share his fortune.

One evening, at an investment meeting, he spotted the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.  Her natural beauty took his breath away.  “I may look like just an ordinary guy,” he said to her, “but in just a few years, my father will die and I will inherit $200 million.”  Impressed, the woman asked for his business card and three days later, she became his stepmother.

Women are so much better at financial planning than men.

Peter Holthe, whose idea it was to create FOCM had a great sense of humor and loved to play practical jokes.  He especially liked to play them on people who were taking themselves or a situation far too seriously.   He also got himself into some funny situations and his lovely wife, Kara is allowing me to share this story and a couple others.

This story is true, told to me by  Peter in 2007.

One day in November, Peter Holthe went out golfing and got matched up with another solo player and as they played, they got to talking.  The other man explained that he was from out of town and was using rented clubs.  No doubt feeling intimidated by Peter’s crushing drives and better play, the guy began a steady and unrelenting complaint session hole after hole after hole.  How inferior the clubs were, how he was going to sue the golf course for renting such inferior equipment, how much better he is with his own clubs, how he would have made a 70 foot putt if he’d had his putter instead of the piece of junk he got as a rental.

So after the 18th hole when the scores were tallied up, Peter’s score was a 77.  The out of towner commented how that’s what he would have shot if he’d had his clubs.  To which Peter, now faced with a choice of buoying the man’s spirits or saying nothing (following the adage of “if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything”) did the humorous thing by taking the road less traveled and he replied:  “Actually, I am also from out of town, and these are my brother’s clubs, I usually play left-handed.

I got a packet of information from my new employer and the very last page of all the printed content was the page shown in the picture.  It struck me as kinda funny.

Paperwork Reduction

Seen in October 2013 Reader’s Digest

George Carlin: I went to a book store and asked the saleswoman, “where’s the self-help section?”  She said, if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

Kudos to Crest for a clever idea and a funny commercial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnzbZ2RA4qQ