A Stronger Drink

Humor is a good antidote to untested assumptions and a marvelous way to elicit change at a symbolic level. It shakes us loose.

For example, in a workshop on Enneagram personality styles I handed out a variety of Slammers--bean bag toys that make a sound when you throw them down on a hard surface.

Participants had great fun with these, sometimes slamming them down on the table to make a point during the discussion.

• For those who worry overmuch about what could go wrong, their Slammer was a puppy that shouted, "Oh, no!" 
• For those who are so devoted to others' needs they forget their own, the Slammer had a puckered-up mouth and made the sound of a big, smacking kiss. 
• Those with my own peacemaking style tend to merge with others' agenda and fail to speak up for ourselves. When we threw our Slammers down. .  . they made no sound at all!

A friend says we Enneagram Nines are easy to tease and enjoy self-deprecating humor. That may be true. While reading Iris Murdoch's The Green Knight, I laughed out loud at this passage:

. . . she instinctively made all things better, speaking no evil, disarming hostility, turning ill away, making peace: her gentleness, which made her seem, sometimes, to some people, weak, insipid, dull. "She's not exactly a strong drink!" someone said.

Ironic that my favorite cocktail for many years was a Godfather. Hmmm. I might have been symbolically drinking strength.

As I've matured I've become a stronger drink, stepping up, shouting out; my artwork and my taste in poetry becoming less and less rule-bound.

My post-mastectomy t-shirt almost nine years ago read I LOST MY BOOBS, NOT MY SENSE OF HUMOR. And my son Dylan Schwab helped me create a Ta-tas rap.

I was inspired by Anne Hathaway, who is Sweetness personified (and I'm sure has very nice breasts), performing her paparazzi rap: