Personal Challenge: The Results

For those of you who have been holding your collective breath, wait no more - the results of my personal challenge are in. To refresh your memory, the challenge as set forth in my previous blog was as follows:

So, after some thought I decided that today's challenge will be to make someone I don't know laugh - not smirk or smile, but actually laugh.

I attempted this challenge a couple of times and had some success.

1) Late Thursday night shopping at the local supermarket, I was the second in line at the checkout. In front of me was a family of French immigrants, one of which was wearing a Navy uniform with a number of very important looking stripes on the sleeve. Not only were these customers taking their time loading their purchases onto the conveyor-belt, but they also spent an inordinate amount of time packaging them after the checkout lady had scanned them. To top it all off, the conveyor-belt stopped working. The checkout lady was not a happy camper. This was a perfect opportunity for my challenge. It was going to be a tough one, but the harder the challenge, the greater the success - right?

So, there I was, working hard to get all my stuff onto the stationary conveyor-belt and packed into bags at the other end. When all was done, the checkout lady rang up my total and told me what it was. I looked at the number and then said with a smirk on my face, "What? I have to pay for it, too?" She smiled a weak smile. This was going to be a tough customer, but I was building it up, you see. Then, she swiped my credit card through the card-reader and nothing happened. So she tried again. Holding the card between her two fingers she said, "Doesn't work". So I replied, "I've used it so much today, perhaps it's tired". This time a broader smile, but not what I was looking for. So I asked her to try again. It worked and then I said, "Now that you got my card working, perhaps you can fix the conveyor-belt, too?!" BANG! She laughed. I couldn't believe it. The lady laughed. OK, it was more like a giggle, but I think that fits into the criteria.

2) Later on Thursday night, I had just finished unloading the shopping from the taxi onto the footpath outside our building, which is not far from the rubbish bins. The taxi drove off and I saw a neighbour walk up to the rubbish bins, rubbish bag in hand. I have to say that although I have seen this person a number of times, I can't recall actually ever having spoken to him, so I am going to include this man as "someone I don't know".

Anyway, I looked at him, looked at my shopping then looked at him again and said, "That's the last stage" Understandably, he looked puzzled. So I said, "Well," pointing to my shopping, "this is the first stage. Eating it is the second stage," I said pointing to the house, "and throwing it away is the third stage". The man thought this was a little bit amusing (you had to be there) and so I went in for the kill, "It's the cycle of life!" BOOM! He laughed. What more could I ask for?

So I suppose you could call it a successfully completed challenge. I now have room on my schedule for more challenges. Come on, lay-em on me!