Mother Nature's Sense of Humor

Over the years, it has come to my attention that Mother Nature has a sense of, a wicked sense of humor, and one of her favorite targets for a joke is the human body, especially body hair.

Young men, especially teenagers, look upon body hair as a sign of their manhood--the hairier one is the more machismo one has. But does Ma Nature care about the fragile psyche of the male teen? Only to the degree of what kind of jokes she can play on him.

For instance, while attending Jr. High School (7th-9th grades), I knew guys who could grow full beards--the rest of us were seniors in high school before we could grow a mustache and even then it was “baseball” mustache, 9 on each side.

Those guys not only had a thick head of hair, but they also had enough chest hair to make a woman’s wig. Shoot, by the time I had any chest hair I was crowding age 40, fighting my own personal Battle of the Bulge, was a veteran of 17 years of marriage, and had 3 sons. What the heck good did it do me then? But I diverge.

Anyway, the girls flocked to those guys as if they were Chip and Dale dancers. So what cruel little joke did Mom Nature play on them? Well, by the time these guys were seniors in high school, when the rest of us male students (and a few of the girls) could barely sprout the pitiful beginnings of a mustache, the hairy apes of our school were going bald, and it shook their manhood to the core.

It was a pathetic sight to walk into the men’s lavatory at my high school and see guys, who once were the epitome of manhood, sobbing as they looked in the mirror at their rapidly thinning hair.

While we’re on the subject of body hair, when I was a cocky, know-it-all teen, I used to laugh at men with nose hair. I thought they belonged in the freak tent of a carnival between the bearded woman and the snake man.

Well, Mother Nature played another cruel trick on me. That’s right, you’ve guessed it. I now trim my nose hairs every three or four days (it beats braiding them) so cocky, know-it-all teenagers don’t laugh at me, thinking I belong in the freak tent of carnival.

Oh, and let’s not forget the eyebrows. Call it karma, Mother Nature’s wicked sense of humor, what ever you want, but I’m now paying for all those years I made rude comments about old men’s bushy eyebrows. You know the comments: “Man, are there any birds nesting in those brows?” or “Hey, have you seen my dog? Last week he chased a squirrel into your eyebrows and I haven’t seen him since!”

Well, not only am I trimming the length of my eyebrows so as not to look like sheep dog, but every three to four days I have to shave my UNIBROW! Oh how we pay for our past misdeeds.

Mother Nature demonstrates her sick sense of humor in other ways as well. I used to be under the false impression that when one reaches adulthood one quits growing, WRONG! Only parts of the human body quit growing. Some never quit growing until the day we die.

You see, I’ve come to believe that our feet continue to grow even after we’ve reached adulthood—either that or shoe manufacturers have changed the sizing of shoes. I swear, in two years my feet have grown two shoe sizes. I’m not complaining mind you. This has allowed me to catch up to the size of my oldest son’s feet. I just wonder what size of shoe I’ll be wearing when I die, will my feet reach size 30? Heck, why stop there? Why not a size 50? At least it would insure me a place in the freak tent at the carnival (I really have a fear of freak tents, don’t I?) or a spot in a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not building.

And speaking of body parts that keep growing, it wasn’t that long ago that I was a thin as a blade of grass. I’m talking a 28 inch waist at age 32. I could eat as much of anything my little heart desired and I would never put on weight. But now, though Momma Nature has seen fit to curve my body’s ability to burn calories and fat, she hasn’t seen fit to curve my appetite. Now, I ask you is that cruel or what?

Yes, Mother Nature has a warped sense of humor, and if I haven’t convinced you of that yet just wait, because another part of the body that continues to grow until you die is your ears. The older you get the bigger they’ll be, better get used to the nickname Dumbo.