I attend a lot of city council meetings. Seriously, a lot of meetings. I have attended a City of Grand Forks council meeting twice a month for the last year and a half. Dozens of meetings, all told, and none of them have made me laugh quite like the one this Monday night did.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not in the habit of laughing at city council. I have a lot of respect for what they do, the tough decisions they have to make, and the role they play in our democracy.
But sometimes you have to find the humour in a situation, and for me that came during a conversation about cannabis regulation on Monday.
Finding humour in the situation is just something I was prompted to think about as I witnessed members of council discuss joints and dime bags in council chambers on Monday. They attempted to consensus on the very serious issues of age restrictions, personal possession allowances and personal cultivation limits under the proposed federal legalization next summer – but it didn’t happen without lots of silly questions.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s a serious issue and one that needs to be carefully considered.
But listening to councillors weigh in on number of joints and how many joints is in a dime bag made me laugh.
There was also the quip about sending the good, locally grown adn organic weed to council.
Lest you think I’m laughing at them, rest assured that they laughed also. It was a moment of amusement in what was otherwise a long and at times tense meeting.
And so that got me thinking about humour. In addition to laughing at elected officials (that was a joke), I also enjoy cheesy sitcoms, a really well-executed pop culture joke, and laughing at myself.
I wrote last week about my experience at the Grand Forks Fire/Rescue’s fire training facility; what I did not mention was how I laughed at myself as I tried to hoist myself into the fire truck wearing 45 pounds of gear and nearly tipped over backwards.
I also deeply enjoy really bad jokes. If you have a favourite, email it to me. I get a lot of bad-news emails – jokes always welcome.
When I was in my final year of school I was busy applying for internships and jobs. Some were more coveted than others; the ones that paid and lasted longer than a month went to the top of the list.
One of these coveted job applications, right at the end (probably to make sure you read all the instructions) asked you to include your favourite joke on the bottom of your cover letter.
This is the one I included:
Q: What did the green grape say to the purple grape?
A: You have to breathe, goddamn it, breathe!
I am still convinced that is the reason I didn’t get the internship.