 happiness in hard times. My name is Ken Burtness and I'm coming to you from Haleiva out at the North Shore. Today we're starting a new series and it's going to be on humor, the joy of humor and we're going to have four installments that is the first one and we're going to start by coming backwards. We're going to start with humor in old age and our second program down the line will be humor in middle age. The third show will be humor for the young adult and the adolescent are from the young adult and the adolescent and the fourth show will be on childhood humor. So today we're starting off into help us with the old age and humor. I've got my good friend Tony Barron who always has a smile and a laugh for me every time I see her. Welcome to the show Tony. Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure. That's great. Let's start off with the idea and the thing that's always impressed me about humor is that humor is not easy and it's strange and people react differently to humor and we'll talk about that more in the show but what it boils down to when we're presented with hard times in life which you know the show is all about. We have a choice. We have a choice either to laugh or to cry and of course this show is definitely in the arena of let's make that choice to laugh. So maybe that's a good place to start Tony. How do we how do we make that choice in the face of a lot of negativity that we see on the news and around us every day. How do we make the choice to laugh. Make the choice to laugh by in my case I cried first. So I was a volunteer out at the men's prisons since 1987. I've been to all three of the men's prisons and just recently I was chastised for holding hands with the men. We do that in a circle and we're saying aloha praying praying and they told me no no touching with the inmates. Well I just couldn't control myself or didn't think about it whatever my excuse was and they put me on suspension for two months and then they said oh and then you have to go through the training again which since 1987 I think I've been through 15 or 20 times and you know what I just said maybe it's time for a change maybe the universe is saying Tony you're just too comfortable so let's kick you in the Akoli and you you don't have to come back. I said okay I won't come back time for a change it I'm almost 83 years old so the universe said let's get on with a show. So here I am talking to you about humor and I have so many stories I can't wait to share them with you. So for the first week I just cried and cried and cried because my world changed and it wasn't my really wasn't my idea or my choice and now I'm ready to bounce on down the road and the one of the first things I want to say to you is that I just I really love being old it is that I am free at 83 what can anybody threaten me with oh I know they could say if you do this wrong we'll give you life in prison. How much time do I have left? So no threat is possible for me. I even got a ticket in my car I was at Costco and when I came back I had a ticket I parked in handicapped but forgot to hang that placard so this was during COVID and I was on zoom with the judge and he said okay you can either plead guilty innocent or guilty with an excuse or reason and I said okay I'm guilty I didn't hang that card and my excuse is I'm old and he laughed and he said case dismissed. So that worked for me. You know another kind of silly thing but it's fun I like people I like touching and when I'm standing on a street corner now if there's a good man next to me I say excuse me sir would you hold my hand when we cross the street? That's all my cheap thrills yeah. That's terrific you know I certainly agree with all that and the you know the card thing was always a catch-22 because I have a card that says that as well and I figured well if I don't hang it up that they're gonna bust me but if I forget to hang it up they're gonna bust me you know so it's like a catch-22 and I thought well I'm just gonna you know I'm just gonna leave it up because they say that you know you're supposed to have it up there and when you stop you take it out down so you don't keep it up there. Well I'm saying I was gonna I was either gonna forget it or I wasn't gonna put it up so I would forget to have it up there so I was sort of had both ways so I just kept it up there and nobody's said anything to me about that about it blocking any view so I was real happy about that but I think that you know the way you started is great because that affects all of us whether we're young or we're old. Every time we have a door closed the saying is that another door opens and I've always found that true whatever age I've been at and I've had a number of doors close on me but all I have to do is look around and there's a new door opening up. Now that new door isn't perfect it doesn't guarantee a opening up to paradise or anything like that where there's no wrong but it offers me a new start like you're talking about and it offers me a chance to see new possibilities and new chances to enjoy life and to laugh and to have a good time and so I've always taken that open door and walked through it with with pleasure so I've been real happy with that so like I said whatever age I'm in let's let's talk about being alone because that's one of the thing I think that most of us in old age are worried about and I think that it was really increased with COVID when COVID came in we were cut off from a lot of our friends and our family members a lot of us were and that's very hard when we most need people we couldn't get to people we couldn't get that support that we were used to so I always found that enjoying humor was the way to you know really take the edge off of that especially if I was able to share that humor with other people so maybe Tony you can tell us a little bit about how you share humor and even when we can't reach out in person to people like we haven't been able to during COVID in that how we can share humor and how we can share laughter with people I think being vulnerable for me I guess my sense of humor is self-deprecating so it's not for everybody but it certainly makes me laugh and in this latest instance I I cried the first week because it was like a death to be cut off almost 40 years of meeting with the inmates twice a week and I asked to come in one last time to say hello hot to the man because we are family and they said no they couldn't accommodate me so I was very it was a harsh ending for me so I cried for the first week and I said well that's enough of that you know I don't need to do that anymore so I called hospice and I volunteered for hospice because staying busy is important serving being with other people is important and then I said oh I know this is a little heavy I call Arthur Murray and take some dance lessons so that's what I did and I haven't started them yet but I've called and we're working on that and let me let me tell you a little something about computers are another thing that just lines my clock so tight I can't see which way is up it really makes me feel stupid but there you go maybe I've been stupid and didn't know it one of the things that that my path to hell is lined with passwords whatever password they want I can never figure it out I've got a file of friggin passwords but for whatever reason it's the bane of my life so when it says it will give us your ID well if I said that to you or anybody else I think you would say well my ID and maybe you give me so security number or your full name or your your email address any of that or maybe then what do what is my ID I still have no idea I'm almost 83 years old I don't know what they want when they asked for that so I said well maybe it's it maybe it's my name maybe it's my ID maybe it's what my mother used to call me when I was a little kid how do you tell I just try them on sometimes they accept it and sometimes they don't another thing that my life has changed I used to go to silver sneakers that the YMCA and I recommended highly it's nice gentle exercises because that's one of the things so many of us do as we become sedentary so I realized before I signed up again after COVID that my I don't have to go there because I am so busy going to the bathroom 100 times a day and 50 at night that I'm getting all the exercise I can handle now that's that's the way to look at it with humor and that's the way to look at it positively I love it so yeah and I of course I face the same thing at night but it's a nice way to get exercise that's for sure we need to stay connected to people when we when we lose a an avenue or a venue for tactile for love for laughter when that avenue comes to an end we must we must do something get a dog go to the shelter get a rabbit get a bird get something that will keep those love channels flowing because it otherwise we just dry up not just our skin with the wrinkles and all that but are the way we think you know we've got to keep open yeah the cannon Tony inside are the same as we were when we were 12 or 30 or 50 or 70 so we can't just lock that off and stop it as if it didn't matter we have to keep the love flow going there's just no other way around it and the love flow has really helped by humor and laughter that's for sure now before COVID I had many years belong to a group called Aloha Ha which was a humor group and we met once a month and we brought jokes and videos and everything and we shared it with food of course in Hawaii we always do everything with food and we had a great time and it was great getting together with those people it's wonderful yeah and it certainly was and of course at all our gatherings and our celebrations throughout the years especially here in Hawaii we do a lot of it at the beach and a lot of sharing with fun and humor and all that and that seemed to close up you know at least a lot of it closed up during the COVID but Tony was one of the great friends of mine because she was always sending me humor in emails and that was always welcome on my computer now the computer may give us some problems especially if we're a little older but it also can be the bearer of humor and happiness with those jokes that are sent around and Tony is one of the best at that so every time I see an email from Tony I open it up really quickly because I'm pretty sure there's gonna be some laughs in there and once I read that I'm gonna be pretty happy so tell us about that tell us about sharing with friends via emails or texts or whatever and having a chance to laugh virtually as well as in person I had two women friends in the mainland and they both lived alone as I do so there's three old ladies they're older than I am and just to see if we're still kicking the next day we would email each other hi good morning how your weather or if we couldn't even deal with that we would just send jokes that come through the internet and that we would share with each other and I was always glad to hear that they liked those jokes because you know that's not everybody's cup of tea so that's what we would do we would sometimes we wouldn't even put a note with it we they just know it came from us and then we must be alive if they got an email from us it doesn't have to be more complicated than that so that works just to just to say hey I'm here and if it doesn't bounce back you must be there too now I've asked Michael to put up some jokes that I got from Tony and so Michael maybe you could display a couple of those jokes and we can talk about that Tony you want to read the first one let's see it says as you get older you get to stay you've got to stay positive for example the other day down oh I fell down the stairs that's the fastest I've moved in decades yeah yeah I go again another one and I'll read that one okay last night the internet stopped working so I spent a few hours with my family they seemed like good people what that's one of the things that's been interesting about COVID or that some of the people that we hadn't been in contact with in a long time all of a sudden we're in contact with and that's opened up talk about opening up a door when one door is closed and all of a sudden my cousins for instance I hadn't talked to my cousins in 40 years and all of a sudden every month since COVID we're doing a zoom and sharing our lives and catching up after 40 years of not being able to see each other because of course they're all over the world they stretch out from Alaska to Georgia on the east coast of America and I'm sitting in Hawaii so all those disparate people came together again and re-established relationships and we do a lot of laughter among ourselves too so all these things are so important and we have to avoid that choice of just sort of sitting and moaning you know and saying oh things are so bad you know and it just sort of gets stuck in that that it goes over and over again like a record that's playing and just just repeats itself over and over and over again and that's one of the things I've always admired about Tony is she gets out there and tries new things and reconnects with people and brings a lot of joy to a lot of people maybe now is a good time to start with the effects of health I've always been concerned now that I'm especially now that I'm getting older I'm concerned about my health and by the way so is my daughter she's listening in she's always worried about where I'm at but I've always been a fan of laughter and feeling good as a way to help myself physically as well as mentally it's one thing to sort of perk up your mental acuity by laughter but it's also great for the body as well I taught a class at Chamonix University for many years called the psychology of humor and laughter and one of the books that I required was an anatomy of an illness by Norman Cousins he was diagnosed with a very rare disease from which only one in 500 people were going to recover and so he thought to himself with was aren't very good odds so what he did was he isolated himself and he was in the hospital on that but he watched he took two hour dosages of not medicine but two hour doses of watching funny shows funny movies and laughing for two hours and then resting you know and you know catching up and then coming back for another dose of two hours and he beat that illness and went on to write that book and a number of other books that he shared with people about the physical effects the physical positive physical effects of laughing and that and I was just talking to another good friend of mine the other night and he's into affirmations and he's into affirmations of laughing which I know about from teaching that class where you start laughing and that first laugh is you know you know it's just seems strange you're laughing at nothing and you know and you're feeling that you know what am I laughing at nothing for and then you had do it again and you go and then all of a sudden you're laughing for real you're going you know and it's a reaction that's very strange to most people but it really works and it gets your whole body going up and feeling good it elevates you and I've always been a big big fan of that and always made that a big part of my life yes I'm really concerned about the physical doing everything that my doctors tell me and my physical therapist tell me and everything but I'm also spending a lot of time laughing so I just wanted to share that as well and I know that you laugh a lot Tony and and tell us a little bit about that how it how it makes you feel when you when you can sit down and just laugh belly laughs are the best no there is one that's better than a belly laugh a belly laugh that makes you pee your pants that's the best you know you have a friend when you start leaking on yourself so most of us get real embarrassed about that but there's a definitely positive side to that you're saying that's great well see there's another benefit now that I'm now that we're this old I see my girlfriends we're all wearing not diapers but something close to it because we leak all the time anyway so to do it laughing is the best medicine you can buy absolutely yeah yeah so and well one of one of my best boyfriends a hundred years ago I went to work and I was I was in the serving business and I don't know if I had the flu or whatever it was I wasn't feeling well and I went to work and this man came in and sat down and in no time at all he had me laughing I said whoever you are I love you just the magic bullet no matter what the story is absolutely see so I am so old I tell everyone that I am wise no one is older around to correct me another one is you can tell me your deepest darkest most shameful secrets because I won't remember them and it allows us to tell stories over and over again that's a wonder about it yeah and sometimes I laugh at them I went to hospice to volunteer to be auditions they wanted to know if I was checking in that's true yeah I think having humor and laughing at ourselves is better than being young or pretty or rich or thin or any of those other good things we like laughter makes us irresistible yeah that's and sort of jumping ahead to a little preview of adolescent humor that always struck me as something because I was always very shy of talking to the girls at that age when I was an adolescent and somehow even if I stumbled if there was a joke around or something that I could tell it loosened me up and it was a lot easier to introduce oneself if you were able to do it some way especially with self deprecating humor yeah that tells the person that you're with right away that you're not full of it and you're not trying to you're just being yourself and enjoying being yourself and that's a big plus when you're trying to make contact with a person so at any age I think that worked very well I'm coming yeah go ahead I've heard from on television probably from several comedians George Carlin and I don't remember the names but all superstar comedians and they said when they were in school they were bullied so the way they would get or get their safety to keep from getting beat up or kicked or whatever was happening being bullied when they could make their adversary laugh then they were home free yeah and that's the big thing about that is that so very few people can do that like the person who came up to you in the restaurant that's a gift and that's not easily come by so you know if the bully comes up to you and you're able to make them laugh like you're talking about that bully is going to say wow this is somebody I need to know and need to be around because I like the fact that this person can make me laugh and I'll just beat up somebody else which is not a good way of eliminating bullies but it's certainly a way of saving yourself at the moment so just like I would save myself from embarrassment while I was talking to the girls which also works at childhood too we'll talk about that when we you know sometime in the future we get to the humor and humor of childhood so that would be great so we were running a little short of time we you know that's the thing about old ages you and I have so many stories to talk about and I you know and I'm you know I wanted to get to a few others but we're running short so I usually at the end of the program I usually ask the guest which I've done with you Tony's been with me a number of times on the show to give advice to the audience who may be having difficulty finding humor in life that may be sort of overwhelmed by all the negativity around what what advice might you give them are suggestions that you might give them to to enjoy life more than they are just got to give it away just keep giving it away even if they don't laugh even if they don't like you even if you're old and wrinkled if you can give them a hug and a kiss on the cheek and give them another hug you just got to have that that tactile or else you're alone and there's no reason for us to be alone there's so many people out there who need us and I like the idea of hugs it's hard to keep a frown when you're being hugged amen and so that's really a very positive thing just this is very hard to you know keep a straight face when you're hearing a lot of humor by the way humor is not easy but you know the jokes that we Tony and I were talking about we didn't get to all of them that Tony had been passing around but the key with I think with the email if you're doing email and sending jokes around like Tony and I are don't expect to get a laugh on every one of them because humor is not is not easy but if we get two laughs out of 10 10 email jokes we are doing well and we've given that person that priceless gift of getting away from all the negativity of life and in all the hard times that we're in so thank you for for sending me those emails Tony and thank you for being on this show it's just been as always a pleasure having you here I love you can thank you very much and to our audience thank you for joining us much appreciated I'm hoping that you will join us again in two weeks we'll be back with finding happiness in our times and a special thanks of course to think tech Hawaii to people like Michael and Jay and Haley and Carol who make this program very possible so take care and make sure that you get a laugh this week thank you if you liked this show why don't you give us a like or subscribe to our channel thanks so much