Things that make me laugh

On the subway: A little boy asleep on the train, fighting to stay upright, but slumping to one side or the other, then jerking upright, like a puppet on strings. (I wonder—did I look like that when I was nodding off during more than a few college lectures?)

On the street: A "living statue" dressed as the Statue of Liberty... only this "lady" would have a 5-o'clock shadow at the end of the day!

In the park: A man holding up a stick for his Jack Russell terrier, who was SO clearly thinking, "Come on, come on! Throw the stick! Throw the stick! Pleeeeaaaassse throw the stick!" The dog was positively quivering with eagerness to run after it.

Also in the park: A boy throwing a stick for a pug... and the pug looking back at him with this expression on its face as if to say, "Well, what do you expect me to do? Go fetch it yourself." Obviously not as much a retriever type as the terrier was!

On St. Marks Place: A cafe entrance that makes me laugh every time I pass it (photo to the left). I've just got to get a picture of myself underneath that entrance sometime!

I'm not leaning in this direction...

One of the TV shows on my TiVo I enjoy watching is How I Met Your Mother on CBS (Yeah, yeah, so it's Friends minus 1 person--there's a reason this sitcom formula worked for Friends for so long!). I haven't caught it lately because of a new time conflict with Gossip Girl (guilty as charged!), but if I happen to be home, HIMYM is one of the shows I turn to.

Recently, there was an episode where Marshall, Lily, and Robin spend the night in Marshall & Lily's new apartment and discover it's crooked--the floor is slanted, pictures hang askew on the walls, and loose round objects roll toward the door (while the three of them are playing Hungry Hungry Hippos, Lily wins every game).

I thought it was just a sitcom thing--surely there aren't actually buildings like that! Well, as I found out recently, there really are crooked apartments.

I was looking on Craigslist for a new place to live, and responded to a post in the Ditmars area of Astoria. When I went in, I thought it was just a figment of my imagination that the stairs up to the apartment were crooked (and no, the photo here is not crooked--if you look at the molding on the wall on the left, you see it lines up perfectly parallel with the edge of the photo... and shows that the stairs have a decided slant to the right!). 

Then I thought, okay, maybe that's just a quirk of the stairway. Nope. The room they were renting also leaned to the right! Talk about your dealbreakers! I'm "crooked" enough, but living in that place would quickly drive me nuts!

As soon as I got to the street, I started laughing, because what was running through my mind was that old childhood nursery rhyme:

There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile,

He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.

He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse.

And they all lived together in a crooked little house.

How I Met Your Mother photo: CBS.com

Stairway photo: me