Be pessimistic when you’re young, but optimistic when you’re old

The optimist is on the right hand side of the picture, with her arm round the pessimist.

Be pessimistic while you’re young, but optimistic when you get older. Do you agree?

I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the message from Diana Athill in her entertaining autobiographical installment  Somewhere Towards The End.

To boil it down further: Be thankful, be appreciative, be optimistic. (Don’t worry too much about being pessimistic at all.)

It’s not just Diana Athill’s credo – she was inspired by newspaper interview with 100+-year old Holocaust survivor Alice Herz-Sommer.

According to Alice, people are born either pessimistic or optimistic.

According to Diana, pessimism or “a painful sensitivity to evil” may be useful in providing a spur to struggle against wrong, but optimism enables one to endure.

Do you agree with either of them? I think I do. Though I also think one can change or learn new behaviour – so the born pessimist may mellow

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Funny

You need cheering up. So here goes…

Mother Teresa (my Granny’s old mucker) died and went to heaven. God greeted her at the Pearly Gates. “Be thou hungry, Mother Teresa?” asked God.

“I could eat,” Mother Teresa replied.

So God opened a can of tuna and reached for a chunk of rye bread and they began to share it. While eating this humble meal, Mother Teresa looked down into Hell and saw the inhabitants devouring huge steaks, lobsters, pheasants, and pastries. Curious, but deeply trusting, she remained quiet.

The next day God again invited her to join him for a meal. Again, it was tuna and rye bread. Once again, Mother Teresa could see the denizens of Hell enjoying lamb, turkey, venison, and delicious desserts. Still she said nothing.

The following day, mealtime arrived and another can of tuna was opened. She couldn’t contain herself any longer. Meekly, she asked, “God, I am grateful to be in heaven with you as a reward for the pious, obedient life I led. But here in heaven all I get to eat is tuna and a piece of rye bread and in the Other Place they eat like emperors and kings! I just don’t understand it…”

God sighed. “Let’s be honest Teresa,” He said, “for just two people, it doesn’t pay to cook.”

Now you’re probably wondering how women burn calories in France?

Three ways. Wine, cigarettes and… surprise, surprise… exercise bikes. But not as you know it.

Here’s another.

A man enters a barber shop for a shave. While the barber is foaming him up, he mentions the problems he has getting a close shave around the cheeks.

“I have just the thing,” says the barber taking a small wooden ball from a nearby drawer. “Just place this between your cheek and gum.”

The client places the ball in his mouth and the barber proceeds with the closest shave the man has ever experienced. After a few strokes the client asks in garbled speech.

“And what if I swallow it?”

“No problem,” says the barber. “Just bring it back tomorrow like everyone else does

“Can I have a lolly and a 69 please?”

Your embarrassing stories please. There’s an absolute corker at the bottom that will have you weeping. But to start with here’s this one:

I once recorded a rather rude message onto my Ex’s pda and set it as his morning alarm call.
That isn’t embarrassing in itself.
What is embarrassing, is it going off in a packed school assembly when you are a teacher as he’s left his phone in your handbag.

Here’s another short one:

After working a double shift at my part time care home job when I was at university, I came home exhausted. Got myself a into the bath for a long soak before having to head into Uni that afternoon for back to back lectures. I was really enjoying relaxing, eating chocolate buttons, eye gel mask on. When I took the mask off I could see the window cleaner at the window, he’d had a full eyeful! I was mortified.

Ten minutes later, he’d finished and… he knocked at the door to be paid

New proof the Rapture really DID happen

So we’re all laughing at those gullible fools who believed the Rapture was coming at the weekend. We’re all chuckling snootily and snidely down our noses. Ho ho, aren’t we so enlightened, not like those sad losers.

Well the laugh is on you.

No, not because Harold Camping has come up with a new date.

Just because neither you nor any of your mates got taken up into heaven – doesn’t mean nobody else did. Quietly. Without a fuss. While you were all (er, and me, ‘cos I’m still here too) wallowing in your complacency, the “elect” could have been boarding  SpaceShipOne for a one way trip to the celestial heights.

But that’s not it either.

The thing is, the Rapture did happen. But no men with beards were involved – not even Richard Branson. Harold Camping simply got one significant detail wrong. And here’s the proof.