At some point when I was young, my dad told me, "Laugh and the whole world laughs with you; cry and you all get wet." Upon reflection, this saying epitomizes our shared optimist philosophy: it's better to laugh so that everyone can have a good time, but at least if you cry you all get wet and that becomes funny too! Unfortunately, thanks to the powers of Google, I just discovered that this saying, which I took to be a wise dictum handed on through the ages, is actually a bastardization of a couple lines of a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox. The actual lines are "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; / Weep, and you weep alone."
So now I'm chagrined, because I just repeated what I thought was a real saying to my coworkers, only to have them all aver that they had never heard that before. I'm chagrined because I should have expected this from my dad, who also repeated many a line from The Far Side or Deep Thoughts (by Jack Handy) to me as if they were wise sayings. (Coincidentally, my youngest sister has a memory store full of Jack Handy quotes, which she can pull out on any occasion.) And I am chagrined because it's a rainy day and now I have a depressing quote on my hands. Weep and you weep alone . . . no way! :-)
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