No pain, no gain

“This is for the pain,” the kindly pharmacist said.

“The pain?” I replied.

Had I looked in pain when I visited the doctor? It’s possible.

People in my family tend to look in pain most of the time, which can be awkward, especially on happy occasions.

Graduating from college. Getting married. Retiring.

We look grim. We were taught to repress displays of emotion, even when emotion might be very appropriate, and so we end up in many family pictures looking as if we’d all just had a root canal — or are about to have a group colonoscopy.

I inherited the family gene. When I became the first in my immediate family to graduate from college, who knew.

“What’s wrong with you? Why the glum expression?” my classmates inquired at a raucous celebration at the University of Oregon.

“Believe me, I’m happy. This is all I’ve got. There ain’t no more.”

Even though the UO couldn’t pry the ain’t out of me, I did learn a thing or two.

One lesson is to live in the present, not the past or the future. The present is all you have. The past can’t be undone. The future is yet to unravel.

The second lesson is not to take yourself too seriously.

That lesson didn’t come easily. I hail from a long line of sourpusses, of dour-faced Puritans who probably would draw a shotgun on the exuberant Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes Prize Patrol crew if it came to the door with $1 million.

Show that on the TV ad.

We are habitual worriers. We take everything seriously, even the TV show “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”

“Why do they keep showing people slipping, tripping, falling, getting bucked off horses, crashing on skateboards, motorcycles, bicycles, getting attacked by geese, deer, beavers, falling off trampolines, tipping over their chairs, making big holes in dry wall, skidding down stairs. That’s funny? Looks more like a training video for the law firm Smith, Barnes, Noble and Whiplash.”

We have a tendency to analyze comedy to death.

We don’t have problems entertaining ourselves, and we don’t need cable TV. With our Scandinavian background, we think ice fishing is overstimulating.

There seemed to be a familial premonition of impending doom. We were certain the worst was about to happen, especially when our ship came in and my grandpa, Oswald Christian Andersen Johnsen Swensen Petersen, traded working 80 hours a week at the service for working 80 hours a week at the ranch.

Even land rich we were glum.

But I was grim way earlier. In grade school we made applehead dolls, those dolls that look like the wrinkly faced shar pei dog. I was voted the kid who most resembled his doll.

We’d look grim even when we got a really great gift for birthdays or Christmas, like underwear or socks.

Our adolescent angst turned into adult angst and then old age angst.

The point is, don’t take yourself too seriously. No one else does.

If I go to another graduation, wedding or retirement party, I promise, this time I’ll smile.

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