Bear Poop

Bear Poop

“Humor is a serious thing. I like to think of it as one of our greatest and earliest national resources which must be preserved at all costs.”

James Thurber

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            I love the picture of Jesus sitting with children on his lap and all around him; his head is thrown back, and He is laughing. You can tell one of the kids has just done or said something that tickled His funny bone.

            There may be some people who are offended that I speak of Jesus as having a funny bone, but He was not only divine, He was human. I think He probably had his share of fun with his siblings, cousins and friends. But if that offends you, you might want to skip this chapter.

            There was a time in my life when I almost forgot how to have fun. Sometimes the heaviness of the responsibilities of raising children puts a strain on our funny bones.

            But now that I am well into middle age, I love to laugh. And when you have three daughters who have given you three sons in law and eight grandchildren there is usually always something to laugh about.

            I have a lot of good friends that I laugh with too. But there is one in particular who always lifts my spirits. Sometimes when we are together, you would think we were a couple of silly teenagers; maybe because we first met when we were teenagers.

            She is the person who introduced me to hiking. I love it and want to do as much as I can before my knees and hips wear out. We started to hike in the “little” mountains in Smokey Mountain National Park. The last hike we did was in the Canadian Rockies. That one was not a little mountain or an easy trail. But it was fun.

            The most fun hike we have taken was one of the first ones we did in the Smokies.  My friend, whose name is Dolly, her husband and mine and I took off for a day hike, all decked out in our new hiking clothes, boots, and sticks. And enough food and water in our back packs to feed an army for a week. You would have thought we were hiking the Swiss Alps.

            Before we took off, she wanted to know if I had brought any toilet paper. I had forgotten there were no bathrooms on this trail and we were going to have to get off the trail and do our business in the bushes.

            I had not done that (used the great outdoors for my bathroom, I am a little prissy sometimes) since I was a child and I didn’t like doing it then. Men are so lucky in that way. I told her I wouldn’t need any because I wasn’t going to have to go because at that time I had a pretty healthy bladder. “Okay,” she said, “but you aren’t getting any of mine.

            About an hour down the road she was already hitting the bushes. I stayed strong. At lunch time we sat for a while to eat and I limited my fluid intake, so I wouldn’t have to a “go” until we got back to the trail head.  I know that isn’t healthy but I wasn’t a seasoned hiker yet.

            We got about half way back when she decided it was “time to go again”.  So off she went. It wasn’t two minutes later, we heard her screaming from the bushes. I half expected her to come running out with her pants around her ankles and a bear behind her. I was half right. Her pants were not pulled all the way up but there was no bear; just bear poop all over the back of her pants. She had dropped her drawers in a pile!

            Of course that made me laugh until I almost peed my pants myself. It was then that I decided to either give up hiking, learn to like adult diapers or let go of my aversion to using the great outdoors for my bathroom.

            I’m still hiking with my friend and we are still having fun. We laugh now about whose hip or knee hurts the worst but we keep going. After all, in our thinking, God didn’t just make mountains to look pretty, he made them for old ladies to hike! As long as they take twice as much toilet paper with them as they used to.  And I think when God hears us giggle like little girls about that, He smiles. Who doesn’t love to hear the sound of their children’s laughter?