Do you ever just feel the need to lighten up and laugh? I had one of those days today so I decided to search the Internet for something to make me laugh.

Being a senior myself, I decided to look up something that could make me laugh, more or less, at myself. These are a few of the things I found.

As a senior citizen was driving down the freeway, his car phone rang. Answering, he heard his wife’s voice urgently warning him, “Herman, I just heard on the news that there’s a car going the wrong way on 280. Please be careful!” “Heck,” said Herman, “It’s not just one car. It’s hundreds of them!”

The Senate is investigating deceptive sweepstakes practices. These companies target the elderly and make them think they will receive a bunch of money, but in reality they never see any of it. The most popular of these scams is called Social Security.

When my grandmother was in her late nineties, she decided to move to Israel.

As part of the preparations, she went to see her doctor and get all her charts. The doctor asked her how she was doing, so she gave him the litany of complaints – this hurts, that’s stiff, I’m tired and slow, etc., etc. He responded with, “Mrs. Siegel, you have to expect things to start deteriorating. After all, who wants to live to 100?” My grandmother looked him straight in the eye and replied, “Anyone who’s 99.”

There was this group of old ladies riding in their car about 35 miles an hour when a cop stopped them and asked, “Do you know you’re only going 35?” “Yes” said the driver. “Why are you going only 35?” “Because the sign says 35.” she replies. “That’s the number of the road,” the policeman said. “By the way why are those ladies in the back seat so scared?” The driver said, “We just got off of Highway 95.”

An elderly lady did her shopping and, upon returning to her car, found four males in the act of leaving with her car. She dropped her shopping bags and drew her handgun, proceeding to scream at them at the top of her voice, “I have a gun and I know how to use it! Get out of the car, scumbags!” The four men didn’t wait for a second invitation, but got out and ran like mad, whereupon the lady, somewhat shaken, proceeded to load her shopping bags into the back of the car and get into the driver’s seat. She was so shaken that she could not get her key into the ignition. She tried and tried, and then it dawned on her why. A few minutes later she found her own car parked four or five spaces farther down. She loaded her bags into her car and drove to the police station. The sergeant to whom she told the story nearly tore himself in two with laughter and pointed to the other end of the counter, where four pale faced males were reporting a car jacking by a mad elderly woman described as white, less than 5′ tall, glasses, and curly white hair carrying a large handgun.

I found this in a book: Dan Rather once asked a 106-year-old man to disclose his secret of long life. The old man rocked back and forth in his chair and then answered, “Keep breathing.”

Proverbs 15:15 says, “The cheerful heart has a continual feast.”

So until next time keep laughing and for goodness sake, keep breathing.

Sylvia Hughes is a retired newspaper editor and a regular contributor to the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald. She can be reached via email at sylvia.hughes@r-cnews.com.