As Beryl Clark likes to say, she "taught school for twenty-nine years and had three husbands and three mother in laws, so she has lots of material." And boy, does she know how to use it! Just ask any of her friends, or even one of those complete strangers she meets in the grocery store and keeps laughing for half an hour. Beryl is one of those magical people that can turn standing in line at the post office, or anywhere else, into a party. As her hairdresser puts it, "Beryl, you're a party waiting to happen." In fact, her spell is so effective that more than one proprietor has offered to pay her just to come and walk through their shop a couple of times a day to improve the morale.

Now all can benefit from these mood-lightening stories. At the urging of her many friends, Beryl has written down a selected sample from her vast storehouse for all to enjoy. Funny Things Happen is your chance to see life through the eyes of a woman who is proud to say "My plans to catch a husband made D-Day look like child’s play!"

Beryl Clark was born in Michigan and received her B. A. in Elementary Education from the University of Colorado, and her Master of Fine Arts in Special Education from the University of Northern Colorado. Before beginning her twenty-nine-year teaching career in the Colorado Boulder Valley and Adams County Five Star school districts, she worked as a muck farmer, a student X-ray technician, a waitress, and a department store retail clerk. She also was a Sunday school teacher and a Master Gardener. But above all, she is a mother for her three children and a grandmother to her four grandchildren. Currently, after a few years of retirement, she is back in education, working forty hours a week as a day care teacher to finance her love of travel. She lives near Boulder, Colorado with her husband, plus a raccoon that likes her birdseed, a bunch of rabbits that like her gardens, and a skunk that likes to stink. She loves them all.

Chapter 1 - Dating Again

Since I was very happily married for fifteen years to John Whitehouse, my first husband and my children’s father, I was anxious to marry again after he passed away to once again be happy. Soon my plans to catch a husband made D-Day look like children's play.

After staying home for a year like a good girl, the first person I dated was twenty years older than I was. He asked me to go a movie.

On the way to the movie, he asked if I had any insurance money to invest in his invention. It was shocking to me for a man to ask such a question. I replied, "Well, yes, I did have insurance money, but I spent it all. And it was so much fun doing it." He growled, but I thought it served him right for asking me about it. The truth is I saved the insurance money for my children's education, but I never told him.

The movie was The New Leaf with Walter Mathau. It was the first time I had gone to a movie in a year and the first time I had laughed in a year. The story was about how Walter spent all his money and so he is looking for a suitable woman to marry and live off her money. I laughed uncontrollably during the whole show because sitting right beside me was a man doing the same thing as Walter!

I called him the ‘watchband man’. He was very nice in many ways, but had an irritating habit of pushing his food around his plate all the time he was chewing, waiting for the next bite. He wore his watch on the upper part of his arm.

I asked him, "Why is your watch clear up there?"

"My watchband is broken."

So I bought him a new watchband, but soon I saw the watch back up on his arm near his armpit. Yuck!

He had a habit of calling just as we were finishing dinner so he could come over and eat our leftovers. One night after he finished I put his plate on the floor and let Mo, our boxer dog, lick the plate. When it looked pretty clean, I put it back in the cupboard saying dogs are handy to have around. The watchband man never called again. (Yes, after he left I washed all the plates in the dishwasher.)

I started attending Parents Without Partners and enjoying all their activities. One time they held a tennis tournament and I won a trophy because I was the only female that showed up. My children were so proud when I brought it home. I thought it was kind of funny.

A typical singles activity always had about six men with twenty-six women and the things the women would do to get noticed by the men were downright funny. One time we held a mixer record-dance. As the dance was about to get started it was painfully obvious we didn't have enough men. So I said in a loud voice, "I know where to get some men!"

On the other side of the building was a bar. I walked up to a handsome man and asked if he was married. He said no, so I said, "Come on, you're needed in here." I grabbed his drink, pulled him off the barstool and took him into the mixer-record dance. He had a wonderful time, and told me later how much fun he had had and how glad he was I had pulled him off his barstool.

At another dance, the only man that would ask me to dance was a short, Hispanic type that whispered Spanish in my ear. I answered with "No, no ... no... no," because I didn't understand what he was saying but I knew "No" would take care of it.

A couple of months later at a Parents Without Partners meeting a great big handsome, gorgeous hunk got up to talk. He stated he would like to trade home-repair for a home-cooked meal. I stood up waving, wiping the drool off my chin, and saying, "I have a broken screen door I would love to trade for a steak dinner with apple pie!" He agreed to come over on Saturday night so I went home from the meeting and kicked my screen out. As he was fixing the door, he asked how this happened. I just said, "Oh, you know kids!"

PWP potlucks were pretty fun, especially since the men only brought wine. I learned so much about the different types and kinds of wine. I also learned that the men were really hungry for a home-cooked meal and made sure that I always had a complete dinner fixed, because, sometimes even the women brought only wine. This latter fact explains why, at a Halloween party, I was riding around on the shoulders of a very big man holding up a rope from his neck because it was part of his costume, saying, "See everybody, this is what his costume looks like!" He looked up at me and said, "I'm so glad I joined PWP, this is so much fun!"

My house became a real recreation center during this period, with people playing Ping-Pong in the basement family room, people dancing in the living room, people jumping on the trampoline in the back yard, and people eating and visiting in the kitchen.

Eventually, at one of my parties I met a handsome air traffic controller who wore a mustache and fell madly in love with him.