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KEEP YOUR NOSE CLEAN SO YOU CAN SMELL A PHONY
Listen, kiddos, and I will impart knowledge to you in a slightly oblique manner. Should you decide to pay attention, you might even learn something you didn’t know you needed to know. And even if you retain nothing at all from my imparted wisdom, you will at least exhibit the highest manifestation of human behavior—a chuckle.
Today, it starts with noses.
The grandiloquent comedians Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding gave us the gift of chuckles embedded with insight and palatable Aha! moments. Bob and Ray once said, “Keep your nose clean so you can smell a phony.” How much more succinct can you get when you are attempting to tell someone how to lead an alert and sagacious life? Just keep your nose clean so you can smell a phony.
Speaking of noses, sometimes they get stopped up, disengaging our ability to spot fakes. At those times a good sneeze helps. As another comedic team, Homer Haynes and Jethro Burns once reported, “Scientists have finally found the answer to the common cold: ‘Gesundheit!’”
Now and then the only way to get past a sticky situation or a morose thought is to sneeze, yell Gesundheit! and sally forth as if the world is A-OK once again. Homer and Jethro spent many decades spreading the goodwill of silly humor.
Are there other techniques for swatting away the phonies in our lives, the phony disinformation splattered over us, the snarky gossipy ill-informed comments that are hurled our way? Chuckles might help. As Mel Brooks has been preaching for a lifetime, the best way to send the enemy back into a squirmy black hole is to face the mean-spiritedness full on, laugh a healthy laugh, and go on about your business as if you have no use for such blather.
Don’t deny the enemy’s existence, just show the world that the enemy does not matter, has no effect, exerts zero control…over your ability to chuckle.
If you don’t pay attention to snarkyness, it becomes marginalized and of no importance to those of us who just want to lead good and sweet-natured lives.
The nose knows.
Keep the laughter alive, keep the nose clean, eat a banana, avoid slipping on the peel, yell Aha! or Gesundheit! once in a while.
And, when you want to share your kindness, your chuckles, keep me in mind
© 2021 A.D. by Jim Reed
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast