Humor can play a very large role in our wellness programs. It's all around us if we just look. Not only on TV or in books and magazines, but other people and animals are great sources of things to tickle our funnybones. I used to work with a mentally retarded woman who had pretty much lost the ability to add new words to her vocabulary. What she did upon hearing a new word was to replace it with one she already knew that sounded similar. Some of her utterances were truly hilarious.
Let's play a little game to show you what I mean. I'll give you a sentence she (let's call her Sally) would have said and you fill in what she should have said.
For example: As we were riding along one day, we passed a pasture with some little donkeys standing around under a tree.
Sally's sentence: Correct sentence:
Those donkeys look finished. Those donkeys look famished.
Okay, your turn. I'll give you some of Sally's more memorable remarks and you tell me what she really meant:
1) I had to sleep on a crouton last night.
2) She fixed me some college cheese for lunch.
3) I have a friend in Pepsi-Cola, Florida.
and her favorite one:
4) I wish I could have a celery phone.
Do you notice a pattern in her remarks?
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Sally's difficulty with words is really interesting; would that be classed as a type of aphasia?
ReplyDeleteI've always been interested in linguistics - the more so at the moment, since my son has just entered the pre-language stage of his development.
Alannah, I don't believe Sally's problem was a from of aphasia. She simply had a difficult time assimilating new words into her vocabulary. I wish I had kept track of all the bloopers she made over the years that I knew her. It would have made for hilarious reading.
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