laughter is the best medicine

YAN, fellow blogger at yancorner.blogspot.com, was the delightful "maiden" visitor to my new cyberhome, and I returned a courtesy visit and found her blog informative and current. Today's posting was partly inspired by her entry "A Merry Heart" in which she quoted a Washington Post report reaffirming what we all already know by expereience. Yes, that Laughter Is the Best Medicine! "We believe laughing is good for your health. And we think we have evidence to show why that's the case," Michael Miller of the University of MarylandSchool of Medicine in Baltimore says in the news report.


Of course, the Reader's Digest has been running a same titled column for the past five decades which must surely reinforce the good doctor Miller's decision to prescribe to his patients that doses of 15-20 minutes of laughter a day is just as important for good health as thirty minutes of exercise. I certainly grew up with a constant diet of RD's other humour sections for some 15-20 years, and I believe (a little self praise here!) I acquired some sense of wit and satire along the way.

We all enjoy jokes in our growing up years, and there are mainly delivered in prose. but when adulthood sets in, joviality often flies out of the window and solemnity takes its place. But in poetry, there are many works that can also bring out laughter or a quiet smile in both the young, youth or elderly reader or listener. Charles B. Wang, in his advice to readers of his book, Techno Vision II: Every Executive's Guide to Understanding and Mastering Technology and the Internet (1994), said: "I am a life-long collector of jokes about IT (information technology) and business. Among my most important discoveries in running my company was the impact of humour -- and the danger of telling jokes. What can I say? I like to live dangerously. If readers prefer to avoid all risk of offence, let them overlook these items."

Also, Andrew Scotland in Poems of Yesterday and Today said: "Too often, poetry is regarded by some children as a serious , even a solemn subject. But the verbal felicities and fun of humourous poems appeal to children, and our literature is rich in them." So if you the reader should guffaw with unrestrained laughter on reading this post, then it's proof that the medium of poetry is working its magic. So not much elaboration would accompany the poems cited here, as the saying goes: The proof of the pudding is in the eating!

This is a special type of poems called Limericks, consisting of five lines always, and where authorship is known, it is duly recorded; otherwsie, the source is anonymous, it could have been one of you!


There was a young man from Niger

Who smiled as she road (sic) on a tiger;

They returned from the ride

With the lady inside

And the smile on the face of the tiger.



There was a young fellow named Hall

Who fell in the spring in the fall;

'Twould have been a sad thing

Had he died in the spring,

But he didn't, he died in the fall.


There once was a runner so fit,

During practice he merely would sit.

So the day of the race,

He retired in disgrace,

After finishing penultimate.


A goat on a stroll near a brook

Found an old movie film and partook.

"Was it good?" asked his mate.

Said the goat: "Second rate!

Not nearly as good as the book!" by Martin Bristow Smith (b. 1916)


A man said to the universe:

"Sir, I exist!"

"However," replied the universe,

"The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation." by Stephen Crane


The limerick's never averse

To expressing itself in a terse

Economical style

And yet, all the while,

The limerick's always a verse. by Laurence Perrine (1915-1995)