Humor Saves the World!

Strange…

The door is open.

I can hear some strange sound from within the room.

People are chatting, talking, and singing a song…

Who is it?  Burglars, maybe….

I made up my mind and dared to opened the door!

It was more than thirty years ago, when I was a college student of University of California, San Diego. My major was counseling psychology. I studied the subject in the graduate school. I had been staying in the same dormitory room during the period. And I did enjoy my stay there. Just then I had that incident.

Now, let’s go back to the scene I have just mentioned.

I opened the door…and…there, I saw more than a dozen young American girls are chatting, talking, and singing there…and that they are almost half naked!!

At first, I could not believe my eyes. I thought as if I were in the Paradise!!

But just then a sudden scream of the girls brought me back to the reality. One of the girls who seemed to be the oldest and a chief came running up to me.

We had a talk outside the room.

I said,

“Very sorry to have surprised you so much, young lady, but this room is mine.”

She replied,

“No, no no, this room is ours. This morning we did check in officially and we have finished bringing our baggage inside the room!”

Yes, there must have been a big mistake in the rooming list of the dormitory office.

So together with her, I went to the office. The person in charge of dormitory affaires is a young lady named Jane. I knew her very well. I explained the situation we were in and asked her to cope with the difficulty we were having.

Jane seemed puzzled and went backside of the room in order to check the list and to have a talk with her boss.

Seemingly it would take some more time; I was just waiting for her at the counter.

While I was waiting, I felt relaxed and kept calm, because I had done nothing wrong.

Instead I felt very sorry for the girls in my room. The mistake is on the office but the girls are required to move to another room in another dormitory building. It will take a lot more time and it will very troublesome. I felt very sorry for them

Just the Jane came up to us with her boss, an middle-aged woman with a very serious look on her face. The boss sad to me,

“Mr.Toyama, we are very sorry not to have let you know our campus schedule.  This week All America Cheerleaders Contest is going to be held on this campus. So more than two thousand five hundred cheerleaders, girls, are supposed to gather and stay on this campus for a week… Just think of two thousand and five hundred…we do not have and empty room available for you.  We are very sorry, Mr.Toyama, to ask YOU to move into another dormitory building outside the campus…”

My dear fellow members, suppose you are in my position, in my place at that time, how do you react to this situation? How do you respond to her statement?

I my case… I laughed!  Laughed and laughed and laughed… until tears came down from my eyes.  The ladies around me looked at me in an amazement and bewildered. They must have thought, “Oh, no, this Japanese guy must have gone crazy!”  But that was not true.

I said to them,

“My dear ladies, I thank you very much for this very rare occasion!  I am sure this must be a very good souvenir story for the students who are waiting for me back in Japan! Just think of it!  Two months ago, I came all the way from Japan to this university. Why? Just in order to be kicked out of the dormitory room by American cheerleaders!!

What a funny story this is! They will love my story very much. Thank you again. I move to another room, so do not mind!”

I seevery well how relieved they are! The boss of the office said to me,

“Mr.Toyama, we really appreciate your sense of humor…!”

From that moment of that day in my youth, more than thirty years has passed. During this time, I have had many hardships, difficulties, hard time, and tough periods. Whenever I have to face hardship, the sense of humor which I leaned at that moment thirty years ago, has supported and helped me to cut my way through the difficulties.

How?

Sense of humor is not just something to make people around you laugh at you.

Sense of humor is something

to let you look at the hardship you have

from a different standpoint,

from a different angle,

from a different perspective

and it gives you a different and renewed meaning of the difficulties.

That renewed meaning will always help you, support you to survive the hardship.

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s have and love the sense of humor, and it will surely love you back, and will support you always to survive the hardship you have in the future.

Thank you

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