Your Face Won't Crack If You Smile

I named this book "Your face won't crack if you smile" because that's the story of my life. I was born and raised in the Chicago area and at 16 years of age, my friends started calling me Smiley. A name that I was tagged with because I never smiled. I was told that if I smiled, my face would crack. As a result, I spent many hours training myself to look beyond all the sadness in the world and twist every sad situation into something funny if it was possible. I read many books on humor to see how they think and then ...try to imitate their way of thinking. I found that most people are basically funny and many things I write about hinge on listening to them say funny things and not realize it. Being a good listener has provided me with a whole file cabinet full of humor. After an operation, a friend caused me to laugh and it was painful. When I told him it hurt when he made me laugh, his reply was, "When I say something funny, don't listen." Many years have passed now and my face never cracked. I wrote a humor column for a new paper, a number of magazine articles and I was guest speaker at a number of functions because of my humor and not my smarts. My whole life changed for the better because I was called smiley.