22nd Day of Thanksgiving, or T-minus 6 and counting

Today I'm thankful for humor. In fact, I'm pretty dependent on it.

I laugh a lot. I laugh at clever things, silly things, obscure things, absurd things. I look for humor, I find humor in everyday situations every day. More often, though, I find it without even looking. I guess you could say it finds me.

For example, a few days ago I had had a tiny eyelash floating around in my eye for about a day or so. I finally found it and got it out, and later that day I happened to touch my eye. I thought, "Oh, yeah. I had that eyelid in my eye, but finally got it out." Yes, 'eyelid' is what I thought. And that made me laugh for several minutes.

Yeah. Like to laugh, like that I can find things funny. My sister Linda and I have often commented that we're so easily amused that we sometimes seem simple, but we're happy. Fair tradeoff, I'd say.

So I'm grateful for that sense of humor, and being open to being amused. And speaking of amused…

Until today, the second-funniest thing I'd ever seen on or around an NHL bench took place in a game we attended in February, 2011, New Jersey Devils at the Dallas Stars. Our seats are on the penalty box side, so we're facing the benches, and by sheer chance I just happened to glance at the Devils' bench right at a shift change. The three players leaving the ice went in through the door, and the three coming on the ice stepped over the half wall. (They do that all the time, if you're not familiar.) This time, though, all three players coming over the wall caught a skate or something, and all three of them tripped and tumbled onto the ice, at the same time. It was amazing, and I remember thinking, "Well, that's not something you see every day!" I've search high and low for video that might have caught it, but haven't found anything. So just take a moment and picture it….

The funniest thing, until today, was this gem. We're Marty Turco fans anyway, and this kind of thing is just one of the many reasons. (And it's not that Marty Turco didn't close the door. He opened the door.)

Cracks me up! Also kind of cracked Polak up, too.

But today, both those moved down a place. This is now #1. I saw it on Sean McIndoe's excellent entry on the excellent sports blog, Grantland.

Here's the full post. And he's right: I've watched it about fifty times and I'm still laughing out loud. (This is Sean's own blog and, BTW, you should buy his book. Hockey and humor. What could be better than that?)

Take a moment to laugh, this Friday afternoon, and be thankful for it. I am!