Sense of humour and wasterwater project

Today, as I was reading yet another extremely funny post from one of my friends’ blog it dawned on me that maybe, despite me thinking the contrary; I don’t really posses a particularly good sense of humour. I mean, yeah I laugh at other people’s jokes, I attempt to crack jokes too and sometimes I do make people laugh too (especially if it is at the expense of someone else - c'mon I'm joking ;)  but what I realized is that I am not so good at making fun of myself and let alone laugh at the vicissitudes of life.
The revelation came at once today. After reading my friend’s blog and then thinking about another friend’s (AZ) blog (another equally funny appointment, if you are fluent in Italian that is) the flow of thoughts went this way:

-    How ridiculously funny!
-    As usual.
-    Where did Eternally Distracted (ED) get that photo?
-    That’s not one of our hospitals… but sure it would be possible to find some equally odd departments.
-    Next time I happen to be at a hospital... I’ll pay more attention
-    So funny… how is it that all these funny things always seem to happen to ED and to AZ on a regular basis?
-    Hmmm actually…thinking about it...

That’s when it cracked. These things DO happen all the time, to me too… Yep!
The difference is that usually… as soon as I have to repeat myself a couple of times or I detect a wrong facial expression that betrays complete incompetence... my jaw drops, my face turns red and my ears start steaming. It’s just a chemical reaction that I am learning to live with but that’s it. The comical moment is instantly lost because of my homicidal instinct. By the time I'm over it, it's all too late to see the funny side because I'll have skillfully removed it from my mind while dealing with some other equally frustrating incident of the day.

Hold on someone’s ringing the bell. I’ll be back in a moment.

…. …. …. …. zzz..zzz…zzz

I peek from the bedroom window coze I can’t be bothered to go downstairs to the door or to the intercom. There are 3 labourers at the gate. So I shout from up here.

-    Me: . Yes?
-    Ma’m have you lead infolmation liflet?
-    Me: Uh?
-    This! Infolmation liflet (shaking a green piece of paper taken from the small front gate, the one that I hardly use)

-    Me: One moment I’ll come down.
-    Ma’m we staltin woks for waste watel. See (again shaking the leaflet in question).
-    We connect septic tank to main sewage system. See liflet explain. We need access to plopelty. Stalt date 18th but we stalt today.
-    Me: (trying to work out what day it is today). Hmmm, OK. What do you exactly need to do inside my property? (it’s not truly my property but it is the place where I live so it’s somewhat mine).
-    We going open glound, make small tlench, 1 metel, then put pipe in, then close tlench and put tiles back. Vely good. Connection to main sewage. Mole hygienic.
-    Me: imagining already the floor with missing tiles, a garden full of mess, stench and who knows what other surprise. I guess I have to co-operate… hhmm.

After a lengthy discussion on why I am not going to leave the electric gate permanently open for over a week We agree that they can start today and they can use the small gate.

And so they start: another guy turns up 5 minutes later with a bag of chalk, spreads it around along where I guess the “trench” is supposed to be dug and leaves…

End of the working day…

Yes. I am not immune to the oddities and comical events of a life lived in this corner of the world.