a little humor to bring a smile to your face

As I have said before, all things, agoraphobia included, have their lighter side. When I think back, I can recall several times when my "condition" gave me (or others) a good chuckle. From time-to-time, I'll be adding more truly funny moments and you can share yours too.

Here, Crackers

Usually, when I'm very anxious I "zone out" and have trouble paying attention to anything "in the moment". This was exemplified a few times with my poor parrot, "Crackers."

One time, while I was going to put him back in his cage from his perch, I opened the microwave door and tried to stuff him in there! Thank goodness I caught myself before I pushed the "start" button!! LOL.

I had one other similar occasion with Crackers, but this time instead of trying to stuff him in the microwave, I tried to stuff him in the garbage can! He had a 55 word vocabulary and yelled at me clearly before I could put the lid down on him!

Sometimes practice doesn't make perfect

Another funny incident happened when I was practicing going to the mall, a real biggie for me. I was with my friend, "J".

"J" knew me pretty well. As we approached the middle of the mall and I began to feel more-and-more trapped, she picked up on my anxiety. I think my face looked something like a scarlet blowfish!

Anyway, she was very good at trying to distract me in such situations and on this particular occasion she grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and started heading my disoriented self toward the door. BUT along the way, she paused briefly at every other store, still holding me by the collar, and made me look into the window. She declared that if I didn't knock it off she was gonna drag me into the store and make me fill out a job application! LOL. Well, by the fourth or fifth store I was laughing so hard I could barely remember that I was anxious.

It was a memory that has stayed with me (and probably everyone else in the mall) for many, many years!!

Where's the health inspector?

Here's a pretty funny story from one of my friends in the Agoraphobia Discussion Group:

"When I first started having panic attacks, and before I knew what was happening to me, we would visit restaurants quite often and I would get confused trying to exit the ladies' room and constantly end up in the kitchen. I saw many kitchens until my husband started escorting me to the powder room and back. I can still see the cooks' startled faces when I wandered in and I don't think they ever believed my mumbled story about looking for the health inspector, but it worried them enough to shift focus from me and start looking for the health inspector too. I can laugh about it now!"

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