In Russia, as I sat there day after day wearing headphones, listening to the interpreter struggle to make our words relevant, I wondered if we could establish meaningful rapport with a nation that had never seen raisins dance in dark glasses on TV...never had a garage sale.

If you can't make it better, you can laugh at it.

The mole rat is the only rodent born without a fur coat. With a good lawyer, someone would pay for that little oversight.

Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time.

I was a closet pacifier advocate. So were most of my friends. Unknown to our mothers, we owned thirty or forty of those little suckers that were placed strategically around the house so a cry could be silenced in less than thirty seconds. Even though bottles were boiled, rooms disinfected, and germs fought one on one, no one seemed to care where the pacifier had been.

We even switched to a newly-formed church across the town that gave one hundred and twenty trading stamps each time we attended. (We now worship a brown and white chicken with a sunburst on its chest.)

Laughter rises out of tragedy when you need it the most, and rewards you for your courage.