Inflatable

Well, as an antidote to the generally negative tone of my last few posts, and in response to some lovely things Dooga said on his blog, here's somethig more positive.

Thanks to the generosity of people I work with, I ended up with a free ticket to Adam Hills' stand-up show at the Enmore theatre. I jumped at the chance, as I ove his work of Spicks & Specks and his DVDs. Well, apart from making me laugh so hard I nearly passed out (literally. I couldn't breathe), he had this classic Dad-Joke to share:
"There was an inflatable boy, who went to an inflatable school, with inflatable freinds and an inflatable principle. One day, he brought a pin to school as a joke. He got into trouble, though, and was brought to the principle's office. The principle said 'You're in big trouble. You've let your school down, you've let your friends down, you've let yourself down and you've let me down!'"

Heh.

Adam used this as a jumping-off point into a discussion with his imaginary son (he was positing what sort of wisdom he could pass on, were he to have a child apart from the definition of optimism being "sitting in a Nissan Micra, where the speedometer goes to 240"). I'll try to remember it as best as I can:

"Well, son, maybe... maybe we're all inflatable. And we have the power to inflate and deflate each other. And if you say something nice to someone, they inflate, like this *stands up straight*, and if you're not nice, they deflate, like this *slouches down*. And if at te end of your life you can figure that if you've inflated more people then you've deflated, then I guess you've had a pretty good life."

He then went on to speak about a friend of his who had died in the past year and how she was a real inflator, and how as her trademark, she always wore bunny ears to the Edinborough Fringe festival. She had died at 31 and the next year, all of her friend had gathered at the Festival to mourn and to celebrate her life, and without arranging it beforehand, they had all brought bunny ears. He said that talking about her was sad, but it was happy too. In the early hours of the morning, weary and heavy hearted, he had walked back to his hotel, head down, feeling very deflated. Then he started noticing that people passing him were smiling, large and openly, and it was only after the fifth person that he realised that he was still wearing the bunny ears from the party. He sat down, and he laughed, and he realised that even 9 months after she had left the earth, she still had the power to inflate him and the people around him.

I thought that was lovely.