A Man Who Grins

Ralph Kramden thought he had it all figured out.

Of course that description could probably fit every episode of the classic TV show The Honeymooners, which starred Jackie Gleason as the beleaguered Brooklyn bus driver.

It seems that every show had Ralph coming up with some get-rich scheme that invariably blew up in his face.

But I’m thinking of the 1956 episode “Please Leave the Premises”, where Ralph thinks he’s found the miracle cure for aggravation.

All he has to do—or so he believes—is repeat the ditty “pins and needles, needles and pins, it’s a happy man who grins” and ask himself what is mad about.

Whenever he does, he says, he can’t remember what was bothering him.

Ralph is convinced this line will be the answer to all his problems and, of course, he couldn’t have been more wrong.

His landlord stops by to announce a rent increase, and Ralph explodes, refusing to pay and barricading himself—and his wife poor Alice—in their apartment.

The episode makes me think about some of anger management and positive thinking techniques that I use in an effort to keep my lid firmly in place.

Anyone one Facebook or Instagram has probably see several thousand of self-help sayings. I know I have as I’m constantly reposting them.

I’ve got a couple of these sayings that I think—I hope--work a little bit better than Ralph’s pins and needles line.

One of my favorites is to boldly declare that “It’s a great day”—no matter how rotten your day really is.

I say it to myself when I’m angry or upset about something and I find that when I do, I tend to see solutions rather than problems.

I’ll be more inclined to look for possibilities rather than throw my hands in the air and wail “all is lost!”—which I’ve done for far too long.

Great Day in the Morning

Another one I like I got from the motivational speaker Tony Robbins—though I’m sure some variation of it has been around for a long time.

When something hits the fan, he says you should immediately ask yourself “What’s great about this problem?”

Problems and challenges give us our greatest lessons, but usually we don’t see this until well after the issue has been solved because we're too busy raging against the unfairness of it all.

Only then do we see we’ve learned a lesson, picked up a new skill, or found that we have strength that we never knew we had.

My left shoulder has been hurting something fierce in the last week or so. I’m pretty sure that it’s a result of the boxing classes I’ve been taking for so long.

I was going to try and power through the pain, but I knew that could lead to a serious injury. So, I asked myself “what’s great about this problem?”

Well, it’s forcing me to come up with different exercises and develop new routines. It also provides some much-needed variety to my workouts. Yes, I'd much rather pound the heavybag like a loon, but that's not an option right now.

Seinfeld took a swipe at this idea 41 years after Kramden & Co. where George’s father shouts “serenity now!” whenever he’s stressed. But the phrase only makes things worse.

Ironically, I started saying “serenity now!” to help me calm down because the line made me think of the episode and I'd laugh.

The danger of these sayings is that you start thinking of them as a cure for all your problems rather than as a temporary fix—like a sprinkler system or an airbag in a car. You still have a lot of work to do.

“Please Leave the Premises” ends with Ralph and Alice out on the street with their furniture just as snow starts falling.

He finally agrees to pay the rent but because "you know that I know how easy you get virus.”

Sitting alone in the snow, Alice takes deep breath and begins tp speak. “Pins and needles, needles and pins, it’s a happy woman who grins…”