Daren Streblow

Laughter is like a medicine… you need to keep taking it each week in order for it to be effective and this is the place for it!

So, my wife called out to me the other day – and I thought she was pulling my leg – and yelled, “Can you help me? I’ve glued my hands together!”

She was holding her hands aloft in this odd, twisted manner as if she was learning how to pray for the first time. And, in fact, her two hands were glued together.

Apparently, she had been attempting to glue on new “fake nails”.

Which makes my producer, Ethan, wonder why there is no male-equivalent, such as glue-on-facial-hair.

But, I don’t quite get the fake fingernail thing. From what I can tell, the advantage is that, if you don’t like the ones you have on, or if you just grow tired of them, you can simply change to new ones by layering on a new set on top of the old ones… kind of like adding new siding to a house. The only caveat is that you’ll need to wear larger gloves, over time.

Image: NailsAlbum
Image: NailsAlbum

But, when it came to ungluing my wife’s hands, it took a long time to get the adhesive dissolved enough to liberate her. It made me realize just how much women end up doing for the sake of beauty. It’s not only hard work, but it can actually be quite dangerous.

Men don’t seem to have this problem.
I’ve never heard a guy complain, “Yeah… I put too much deodorant on yesterday and it made my arm stick straight up all day long. It was embarrassing. Teachers kept calling on me, thinking I was raising my hand. I couldn’t even fit inside my car!”

Women are simply much more courageous than men, especially when it comes to the beauty department.

They also just might border on sadistic.

For example, I used to have this crazy eyebrow hair that was growing straight out of my head like a flagpole. My wife called it my errant eyebrow.

“We’re going to take care of this!”, she said as she quickly reached up and ripped the thing clean out of my head in a single move! Two week’s later, it had returned and she ripped it out again. A week later, it grew back again!

That’s when I said, “Hey… since we know that this thing is going to grow back, why don’t we just cut it with scissors.”

That’s when she said, “Oh, that’s no fun.”

WHAT??!!

Next, my dear friend Etta Mae Mumphries (aka Karen Bankhead) joins the show. It’s been too long!

Etta Mae doesn’t view herself so much as “old”, as “well seasoned”. And, while she tries to stay fit and healthy, she says the only thing running on her is her stockings.

Image: Daniel G. Lam
Image: Daniel G. Lam

Not that running could have helped the “Cadillacs” in her eye that the ophthalmologist recently discovered.

WhWhat on earth is a woman like Etta Mae going to do with Caddilacs? She doesn’t even drive. They took away her license since her eyesight went bad. He went on to tell her that she is suffering from “Very Close Veins” in her legs. He’ll need to keep an eye on them, which just seems like a new way of doctors looking for excuses to eyeball an older woman’s legs!

Then he told her that she might have a case of “Dimensions”. She didn’t understand that one at all. She knows about the first, second, and third dimensions. She’ll even be okay with going to the Fifth Dimension… Up, Up, and Away in a Beautiful Balloon!

But, other than all that, she’s feeling great these days.

Luckily, Etta Mae has a lot of friends that she can spend her time with… after all, they don’t call her the “Black Forrest Gump” for nothing. For instance, she remembers being in Las Vegas and talking to her late friend, Sammy Davis, Jr. At the time, Sammy was telling all their friends that he wanted people to know him as “The Magic Man.” But, Etta Mae would have none of that.

So, she looked him straight in the eye – in his good eye – and told him, “You’re too sweet for that, Sammy! You’re not the Magic Man… you’re too sweet… you’re the Candy Man!

And that’s all it took. Sammy started singing and dancing to the Candy Man, and he never looked back… not with neither eye! And the rest is history.