Life Matters: Healing and Motivation Dan’s Dandy Humorous Story July 14th, 2013 (This true story is an excerpt from my second published book.) Humor: Dealing with Difficult People Dealing with difficult people is a multifaceted subject dealing with many different kinds of complex circumstances. This is one story regarding how I coped with a difficult person with humor. When I lived in South Carolina, I encountered a neighbor with a high shrill barking dog. This undisciplined dog would bark for hours. After a hard day’s work, coming home to the sound f this piercing barking rattled my bones and my brain. After weeks of tolerating this relentless barking, I approached the neighbor when she was outside. I told her of my concern regarding her barking dog. She said she was tired of the barking and would solve the issue. She had no intentions whatsoever of being a cooperative neighbor. The next day, this chronic barking dog sent an operatic high barking sound which would have broken a glass. The dog shelter nor the police believed my story. She was a con lady of the highest caliber. On one occasion in my exasperation, I got my recorder and recorded his barking. It was at night. As I was listening to the tape. I noticed a bark that sounded slightly different. Then it hit me like a bolt of lightning, “She is barking with the dog.” Finally, a neighbor came over and witnessed the barking and was willing to cooperate with me. She had put poison in one of his small trees and tried to kill it. Therefore he was more than willing to be of assistance. The police arrived and this time she forgot to hide the dog and they caught her conniving behavior. They said that I could take her to court. She would pay a 100 dollar fine and then allow the dog to bark again. Taking a day off work was not practical for such little results. In my exasperation, at night time I would go out and sing with the dog as he barked. I have a penchant for rhyming, and I rhymed off the top of my head. I did some 20 extemporaneous rhyming verses with the following words as a chorus: We bark, bark, bark all the day long. This barking keeps our lungs strong. The sound of the barking rises high in the air, As an expression to God of two souls in prayer. This creativity and the absurdness of what I was doing was delightfully fun. I do not have a resonant singing voice. I did not feel the neighbors would complain because my singing did not create nearly as much discord as the dog’s barking. After several evenings of this humorous ridiculous behavior, the lady peered over the fence with crocodile tears as she said, “That prayer touched deeply touches me.” Of course the barking continued, and I continued to sing. The singing left me 75% sane. I needed 25% craziness to keep my sanity Humor helped me to transcend the situation and cope with the barking which of course not the dog’s fault. It was the flagrant vast immaturity of the lady. I still to this day feel light and giddy when I recall coping with this issue inn this absurd, creative manner. I love to recall the chorus that I still remember. Humor is an ingredient that can be medically applied to one’s sanity in dealing with an obnoxious person.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Jul 2013 12:42:19 +0000
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