We are spoiled.
I once sat around a dimming campfire, holding a flashlight under my chin and telling my grandchildren that I’d once left home without my phone.
That scary story provided nightmares for years.
I watched a dairy cow. She wasn’t holding a flashlight under her chin and telling frightening stories to calves about eating hay with a thistle in it. She was using a scratching post.
She looked happy. The dairy farmer knew that a contented cow gave more milk.
A fellow who just had a hip replacement (he grew a goatee and wears sunglasses and a beret at all times) was seeing the same thing and asked me why the cow was scratching herself.
I answered she was the only one who knew where she itched.
A police officer told me that one day, he saw a car weaving all over the road. He was about to pull the car over when it went slowly into the ditch. The officer was sure he had an impaired driver he needed to deal with. The driver passed a sobriety test and pleaded that he’d had an itch he couldn’t reach. It drove him to distraction and into the ditch.
I had an itch the other day. I get an itch every day. It’s part of being a basic human. The itch was a doozy. It hadn’t reached the Go-Fund-Me stage, but I couldn’t reach it. I tried and tried. All I got were stretching exercises.
Well, I might have been able to reach it, but I’d have had to put a chiropractor on a retainer.
The itch was like the country of Tuvalu. I’d heard of it but I couldn’t find it on a globe, even if I could find a globe.
I’d tried rubbing my back against a doorframe. It gave temporary relief. I needed to become a contortionist or get a backscratcher.
Why couldn’t I have had an itchy right palm instead? It’d have been easy to scratch. Why the right palm? Folklore suggests that an itchy right palm signifies incoming money or financial gain. You unfortunate folks with an itchy left palm will spend money or experience a financial loss. What does it mean if both palms itch? It means you should stop raising poison ivy for fun and profit.
I tried running several of Tom Brady’s favorite pass routes with my scratching hand on my back. It didn’t help.
I was living in a state of emergency. I knew that because I didn’t have to break the glass of an “In case of emergency. Break glass” case. I had an itch I couldn’t reach.
I once owned a gas-powered turbo backscratcher, which was activated with a starter cord. It was the Clawsome 3000, whose motto was, “You don’t need all that skin.”
I stopped using it when I learned I needed some of my skin.
Finland was named the happiest country by The World Happiness Report for the 7th straight year, followed by Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Israel, Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Australia. Why are Finns so happy? Finland has an abundance of nature, a culture of volunteerism, residents who expect lost wallets to be returned, and it has publicly funded healthcare, pensions and education through college. There are other reasons. I suspect one is that everyone receives a free backscratcher.
Finns have Sisu. No, that’s not something Kleenex produced. It’s a unique Finnish concept combining grit, resilience, determination, hardiness and a backscratcher.
I was yapping at a thing where I was given a nifty metal backscratcher just to shut me up, but I like to think it was because they cared. It was a telescoping model, with a pen clip allowing it to be carried in my shirt pocket when I want to impress the neighbors or my uppity in-laws. It’s a dandy.
The backscratcher made me feel like a cat’s scratching post, only in a good way. It helped me simmer down.
Finland is the defending champion, but on March 20, 2025, which is World Happiness Day, The World Happiness Report will be released.
Do we have a shot at winning? Don’t be so pessimistic.
We have many words for happiness. One of them is “backscratcher.”
Get one and be happy.
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