🙋 TREE 475: Question 3 – ridiculous

I have three questions for you to ask yourself this week. (1,2)

What silly thing can I do today?

On Tuesday night, I was in Halfords buying a car battery and two cans of magical flat tyre repair foam. (I’ve joined The A Team. Don’t tell anyone.) While I was shopping, a teenage boy stuck his head in the front door and shrieked a shriek that caused a another customer to ask if the sound came from a human or an animal. The kid did it twice more.

And that is why grownups stop doing silly things.

Kids aren’t experts at being silly without being annoying or the dumb kind of dangerous, so annoyed worried adults tell them to stop being silly. Kids learn that silliness is bad and grow up to be boring adults who tell their kids to stop being silly.

You have enough life experience to accomplish silliness without being annoying or causing injury. So go for it. Open wide your gland of ridiculosity and let the silly juices flow.

Annalisa Machampshireton has thought of a very silly thing indeed. She’s wondering if she’s brave enough to do it.

Here’s a delightfully silly man covering a silly old-fashioned song. (It’s not on Spotify unless you want the more well-known Scott Walker version or the original Jacques Brel version in French.) Warning: the lyrics will offend modern sensibilities. It’s good that we don’t talk about people in this way anymore (which brings up the question of silliness and offensiveness which came up in response to TREE 170.)

---

Tomorrow, in a change to our normal schedule, we shall be enjoying a TREEpeat.

Please be silly
Jeff