Welcome, Andie Alexander

Happy memories…

When I think of being thankful, I like to look back on the funny things in life—the things that become family legends, whether we want them to be or not. I was the number four child out of five, so I was always a little out of the loop for family jokes that had happened before I was even born. Thus, my younger sister and I made our own, and some of them were doozies. For example, my father always wanted to be Mr. Helpful. So he told us both we had big noses and we needed nose jobs to get a man. No kidding. So my sister and I actually measured our noses…with yardsticks! (Our noses were about an inch long, and I bet right now, you’re measuring the length of your own nose with at least your thumb.)
We laughed so hard, tears poured down our cheeks.

Or I think of the time the two of us decided we were going to be news reporters. We sat down with an old tape recorder and started an ‘interview.’ My sister was the interviewer and I was the ‘guest.’ However, I wasn’t just any guest. I was Mr. ‘Not Sick’, who was sick all the time and talked with slow speech, making her ask me if I’d died throughout the whole interview. We still laugh about these things. She went on to work at a radio station where she interviewed people all the time and made hilarious mistakes on the radio—need I mention the time she had no script in front of her yet had to tell the weather? She stuck her head out the window and said, over the air, ‘It’s going to be cloudy today and I’d say the temperature is going to be 58’, making it all up as she went. Or when she couldn’t pronounce Chihuahua, and instead said, ‘chi-hu-a-hu-a-‘ over the air.

When I got married, my husband and I carried on the tradition of family jokes, whether we knew it at the time or not. We traveled to Colorado Springs, Colorado for our honeymoon. Think big mountains (the Rockies) and a nice town, seeming more like a suburb at the time. Now, I have a tendency to speak before thinking. We were driving along and I saw a mountain a few miles off in the distance. Silly me, I looked at the landscape beside the car, then off at the mountain, and still can’t believe what was uttered from my lips—‘Do you think that building is as high as that mountain?’ My husband just about slammed on the brakes and stared at me, wondering who—or what—he’d married. It’s still a running joke here, but at that instant, that exact thought ran through my mind. We have so many running jokes here, all we have to do is mention one word about the joke, and all of us break out in laughter, doubling over while trying not to have the tears pour down our cheeks.

The point is this: Be thankful for the fun times in your life. Remember the times that made you laugh so hard, milk shot out of your nose and you had problems not wetting yourself. Cherish the laughter and make new memories whenever you can. Life is short, but laughter makes it seem longer and fulfills each day.

Have a wonderful day, filled with laughter and new memories,

Andie Alexander

www.andiealexander.com

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