When humour works as stress buster

Thankfully, there's more humour and wit circulating these days than ever before, bringing much-needed mirth into our hectic and often stressful lives.

In the process, they help ease tensions, banish anxiety and restore equanimity at least temporarily. As gloom-dispellers, they're unmatched.

These two indispensables know no boundaries, impinging without exception on every profession and strata of society. Though unemployed for long due to no vacancies, a schoolteacher I know wasn't short of wit. When I asked the reason for her unemployment, she quipped tongue-in-cheek, "I lack class!"

The niceties of punning aren't usually associated with cops. Yet, a police officer once told me of the stress and struggle he went through at a police training academy before he qualified.

"If someone had informed me that I hadn't passed out after all the hard work I'd put in," he grinned expansively, "I certainly would've passed out!"

Doctors, too, can be hilarious at times. I was consulting one at a local hospital when another patient, waiting to see him, started peeping into the room repeatedly.

Irked, the doctor kept a straight face as he remarked to the nurse on duty, "Sister, why don't you admit that man straightaway in the 'impatient' ward?"

Illustrating the wit of a churchman is this notice that appeared on a church's bulletin-board: "Whoever stole our AC units, keep one. It's hot where you're heading". Another notice intended for motorists read: "Honk if you believe in God.

Text while driving if you want to meet him." Whoever said religion is dull and humourless?

And talking of churches, a wit once described one as "a place where those who haven't been to heaven brag about it to those who are unlikely to get there."

The wife of a paunchy friend of mine is known to be exuberantly jocular – sometimes even at her spouse's expense. Once when he was test-driving a new car which he intended to buy, she wisecracked, "Don't insist on an airbag, dear. You already have one!"

Then there was a high school classmate who was once asked how his parents had reacted to his failure to clear the SSLC examination for a second time.

"They took it calmly," he simpered, adding audaciously, "They're great shock-absorbers!" Incidentally, he went on to become a highly successful car mechanic owning a string of automobile workshops.

And could there be a better or more apt definition of a handkerchief than 'cold storage'?