Introduction
Few would quibble with the claim that laughter makes us feel better. Doctors, although normally not a hilarious lot, have studied what a smile can do for us. They say that laughter releases neuropeptides, endorphins, and enkaphalins, the feel-good hormones our bodies produce to help us cope. There is even something called The Happiness Project in Oxford, England, designed to help people replace depression with the giggles.
But what can possibly be the relationship between humor and breast cancer? It is not obvious to ordinary people, but then my sister Sara Jane Adair was not ordinary. Actually, breast cancer has been a frequent and unwelcome visitor to my family for 25 years. My mother suffered and died from it, my sister Mary fought it off, and Sara died after 13 years of recurring bouts of cancer.
This collection of cartoons has a long history, beginning when Sara was undergoing chemotherapy following her bilateral mastectomy. Sara always had a wild sense of humor, but the mastectomy experience was a test of just how resilient she could be. I mailed several cartoons to her from my base in London and, when I realized how my efforts lifted her spirits I found myself digging deeper into a strange world of roundish shapes. She loved the result and showed some of the sketches to her support group members, whose reactions convinced her that there might be a wider audience out there.
I agreed, and installed a kind of trap in my mind to capture spontaneous ideas that might fit. Soon nearly everything I saw seemed to have potential for “Project 101,” which I code-named the book to avoid funny looks at the office. For example:
‘Bumbershoots for Ken and Barbie’ came to me as I walked past a toy store in the Geneva Airport en route to a consulting assignment. The little Swiss dolls and rubber balls in the window somehow fused into bra-sized umbrellas.
‘Surgeon strangler’ came to me as I tried to imagine the mental state of the average woman who has undergone the mastectomy experience.
‘Cat feedbag’ hit me when our cat threw up a whole can of tuna chunks in brine on the living room carpet.
Sara was a wife, a mother, a sister, a poet, a calligrapher, a flautist (“Don’t call me a flautist, I’m not good enough. I’m just a flutist.”) and a clown.
Her Denver funeral in 2007 attracted nearly 700 people, most of whom loved her for her irrepressible sense of humor. There will never be another quite like her.
Michael Johnson