Have a sense of humor!

I think we take things too personally these days, assuming that anything someone says that touches on something we feel strongly about is meant to be antagonistic, when really: life is too short and full of things that really ARE serious not to try to see the humor in things that really are funny (or at least worthy of a "chuckle")!

I have two examples from this past week. One will potentially offend Redskins fans; the other, Bush fans. No offense is meant; rather, I happen to find both these things genuinely amusing, team loyalties and politics aside. And as I enter my 10th month of pregnancy today, really, people--cut me some slack!

For the Redskins Fans:
This particular gem was brought to my attention by my husband, Jesse, a rabid Redskins fan who, even so, laughed as he read it to me. From the Zeitgeist column in yesterday's Washington Post: #6

Sports. British footballer David Beckham is coming to America, after signing a five-year $250 million contract to run Home Depot. Ha! We joke. He's getting all that money to play for the Los Angeles Galaxy, a team nobody has heard of in Los Angeles, or anywhere else in the galaxy. Beckham's brand of football is different from "American football," because players can't catch the ball or tackle their opponents. In America, that's known as "Redskins football."

After the season the Redskins have had, surely even fans can summon at least a wry grin....

For the Administration Fans:
You've probably heard about this one by now. In Senate testimony last week, Condoleeza Rice clarified that the additional 21,000+ troops we'll be sending to Iraq does not represent an escalation of troops, but rather an augmentation. Now, keeping in mind that, with a master's in linguistics, I have the utmost of respect for minor semantic variations, I feel obliged to point out that dictionary.com defines these terms as follows:

• escalate: to increase in intensity, magnitude, etc.
• augment: to make larger; enlarge in size, number, strength, or extent; increase

Both words are also listed as synonyms of each other and "increase". Still, there is clearly a difference. And yet, it's hard to keep from chuckling, at least a little, at the idea of defending this difference.

Back to waiting for this baby to come....