When troublesome times visit you, if you look for it, there is also something funny or interesting happening. Once that something happens, the dark cloud you’ve been carrying around lifts a little and that spark of happiness or humor can generate memories of other happy times.

Husband Dan and I start our mornings with a cup of coffee in our hands and cats in our laps. We spend these mornings in a room with mostly windows directly off our bedroom; a room that allow us to observe the beginning of the day. Waking up a few days ago, I kept hearing a strange noise coming from that room and when we opened the door, the noise intensified. The noise wasn’t coming from the room, so Dan headed outside to check the covered area where he keeps a grill and the shop vac he uses to tidy the ashes generated by his grill.

There he found a traumatized large opossum who, after checking the grill for nibbles, jumped on the shop vac, turning it over and on! What a thing to happen. We laughed about it all day and now it makes one of those funny stories one tells when with a group of friends. In a week filled with two ill cousins and a dear friend in the hospital, that little bit of improbable sunshine came at a very good time and did indeed spark other memories.

From the workers point of view, Vacation Bible School can be exhausting. One year, while I was driving to the church, a turkey came out of nowhere, and hit my right front fender. I’d inadvertently gone turkey hunting, and the consequence of that hunt was a rather grim fender that I didn’t want the kids at church to see. Off I went to the car wash and came to church with a clean car and another improbable story to add to my tales of Vacation Bible School stories.

School fights are no joke, but one year I saw the funny side of one. One of my students, a 12-year-old boy who seemed to attract trouble wherever he went, explained why there was a fight in the cafeteria. He said that he’d been eating Jello when he somehow missed his mouth and sent the contents of his spoon into the face of another boy. Really?

We all live troublesome/funny/sincere/ spiritual/loving lives and when I find myself lingering too long in the dark clouds, I hope I’ll notice those little interesting or funny or dear moments that also happen. In life, sometimes Hemingway wins, but other times Pollyanna does.

Cindy Arp, teacher/librarian, retired from Knox County Schools. She and husband Dan live in Heiskell.