Sometimes One Just Needs a Bit of Humor

I find humor in strange places.

Often I laugh at my own jokes because I am the only one who finds them funny.  If others find my jokes funny, I tend to remain serious (and then people can't even tell I am joking, but that is another problem).  It is a strange paradox.

Although those around me may grow tired of my punning and literal humor, somehow it never grows old for me.  Perhaps I have the gift of having a child's sense of humor, for a young child will ask again and again for the same good thing and never tire of it.  Imagine loving the present so much that you wanted to live it again and again....  Imagine seeing such treasure in each moment!

Aside from my penchant for literal humor and an occasional ill-timed morbid joke, I have another form of amusement recently discovered.  I would like to share it with you, for no matter how much I may laugh at my own jokes, I still desire to make others laugh more.  Sometimes it becomes a sort of game for me with friends.  I often measure how well I know people by whether I can make them laugh.

Enough about me.  I want to tell you about this new form of humor.  Perhaps you have guessed it already from the pictures, but I doubt that you have guessed it fully.  (If you have, however, you must possess the precise mental approach to life that suits you to be my partner in a traveling Improv troupe, so please submit your application below in the comments.)  All right, what is your guess?

I suspect that you have discovered that these are pictures of a compost pile holding tea bags with lovely trite sayings.  If that is so, you are entirely correct.

The sayings on tea bags can of themselves be quite humorous.  As for example that first picture where the little tag says, "Patience pays."  Every little child knows that it certainly does not pay.  Patience only means that the parents forget that the child needed something and the true way to get what you need is to scream and cry and throw a fit.  I am fairly sure that is the opposite of patience.

Well have you ever considered how amusing these sayings might be as dialogue tags from a compost bin?

Yes, there is my secret bit of humor: compost speaking through dialogue tags.

How can you look at something like that and not think of a dialogue tag from some comic book?  It is too perfect.

So next time you find your day rather dull and humorless, you may just want to check your compost bin and see whether it has any messages for you.  Note: essential ingredients are actually having a compost bin (any bucket is satisfactory) and drinking Yogi teas (or other tea with suitably silly mass-produced sayings).

I leave you with one last question and all of its existential implications: what is the compost in your life saying?