We begin, at that point, to adjust our expectations. It has the same structure, but somehow “thousand years” and “thousand beers” don’t point in the same direction. I think that the traditional style of the first line suggests that this song is going to be that kind of thing and our minds prepare to hear it that way. Max Eastman, in The Enjoyment of Laughter, says that when we prepare for one thing and then another thing happens (in a context where they difference can be taken playfully) we think it is funny. If your mind starts to prepare for this kind of sentiment, you are going to get smacked in the face two lines later.ĭictionary illustration of the meaning of plastered – very drunk. I think of the Irish Blessing-“May the wind be always at your back…” and so on. I think the “May you…” beginning cues up something poetic and traditional. When I am done laughing at a joke like this, I am just getting started. They hear it and laugh at it and they are done. That night I taught it to the church choir at our practice. She actually sang it to me as we were standing in front of the elevators. A fellow resident at the senior center where I live-she described herself as having “an ecumenical background” by which she means she has done a lot of different things in her life-taught me this. I have enjoyed that every day since I first heard it. Here’s the song, to the tune of the Happy Birthday song we all know. That doesn’t make it any funnier, but, for me, it does make it more fun. Then I would like to poke at it a little. I’m going to do that by appreciating a Happy Birthday song I heard for the first time this week. Today, I’m going to try to remind myself of it. I have lost track of that intention in the last few years. I knew when I began writing a blog that was aimed specifically at the things that intrigue me that I was going to have to confront gravity-a persistent pressure toward seriousness-and I determined to resist it. In the context of running a course I will be running over and over I can decide to make changes next time. One of the reasons to call the additional miles something special is that it gives me a chance to reflect on “the race” (getting to 80) itself and decide that I have been doing too much of something or other and too little of something else. I wrote recently about my “victory laps.” I started counting when I hit 80 and every year thereafter is a victory lap.
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