Weekly Smiles – Raymond Pierce.
Raymond is a story teller, and since 2017 has been on a mission to spread Joy and Laughter, he entertains groups of residents at Nursing Homes and Aged Care Homes, he helps lift the spirits of our wonderful Veterans and brings joy to people in Hospitals. Raymond says “I continue my mission of spreading Joy and Laughter by sending Complementary Morning Smiles of Family Friendly Humour and a personal light hearted stories each week by email to over 15,00 people in 30 countries worldwide. Many of them send my stories to family and friends. Sending out humour is especially important during these Tragic, painful times in our Wounded world when we could all use a good laugh. I started emailing my Morning Smiles in 2016 and I celebrated my 82 ND Birthday in the spring of 2026”
😊 Here are a few of his Morning Smiles –
The New Supermarket Opened…. A while ago a new supermarket opened in Chatswood, Sydney, Australia. It has an automatic water mister to keep the produce fresh. Just before it goes on, you hear the sound of distant thunder and the smell of fresh rain.
When you pass the milk cases, you hear cows mooing and there is the scent of freshly mowed hay.
In the meat department there is the aroma of charcoal grilled steaks with onions.
When you approach the egg case, you hear hens clucking and cackling, and the air is filled with the pleasing aroma of bacon and eggs frying.
The bread department features the tantalizing smell of fresh baked bread and cookies.
I don’t buy toilet paper there anymore.
💬 Thoughts to ponder……
The Older I get the tighter companies are putting the lids on their jars!
Inside every older person is a younger person wondering “What the hell happened”
Starting your day with an early morning run is a good way to make sure the rest of your day can’t get any worse than it started!
You never appreciate what you have until it’s gone! Toilet paper is a good example!
Choked on a carrot this morning, and all I could think of was, “I’ll bet a doughnut wouldn’t have done this to me.”
It only takes one slow-walking person in the grocery store to destroy the illusion that I’m a nice person.
It turns out that when asked who your Favorite child is, you’re supposed to pick out one of your own. I know that now.
I can’t believe I forgot to go to the gym today. That’s seven years in a row, now.
Ask your doctor if a drug with 32 pages of side effects is bad for you.
🤔 Then there are these……
Someday everything will make perfect sense. So, for now, laugh at the confusion, smile through the tears and keep reminding yourself that everything happens for a reason.
Your Value doesn’t decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth!
One of the best feelings in the world is knowing your presence and absence both mean something to someone!
Slow down and enjoy the journey right now. Take time for the people in your life who won’t always be there.
I put our scale in the bathroom corner and that’s where the little liar will stay until it apologises.
May you always have reasons to be Grateful.
Never trust an electrical engineer with no eyebrows.
Do you ever get up in the morning, look in the mirror and think, “That can’t be accurate!”
😆 Here are two things to make your day better!
1. Do not watch the news!
2. Stay off the bathroom Scales!
🎨 A Budding Artist.
A kindergarten teacher was observing her classroom of children while they were drawing. She would occasionally walk around to see each child’s work. As she got to one little girl who was working diligently, she asked what the drawing was.
The girl replied, “I’m drawing God.”
The teacher paused and said, “But no one knows what God looks like.”
Without missing a beat, or looking up from her drawing, the girl replied, “They will in a minute.”
🥵 It’s too Hot to Play……
Joshua knocked on his friend’s door and asked “Can Jackson come out to play?” His mother replied “No, it is too hot for him to come out to play!” “Well then” said Joshua “Can his soccer ball come out to play?”
🙋♂️ Are You Paying Attention?
A teacher who noticed that one of his students was not paying attention said “What are you doing Robert, learning something?” The surprised student replied “No sir. Just listening to you!”
👨🎓 The New Professor……
A new professor at the university had started lectures. On the fifth day he suddenly stopped and asked the students “Am I going too fast?” A third-year student who was known for his forthright answers replied, “Don’t worry about it Professor, it’s not worth slowing down for!”
☕ The Coffee Mug……
Tom is in a greasy spoon restaurant with five friends. All order coffee. The cook wearing a greasy apron and a cigar in his mouth arrives at their table holding six mugs of coffee with difficulty, his thumb inside one of the mugs. The cook hands that one to Tom, who says “You had your thumb in my coffee sir!”
“OH, Did I?” “OH, no problem” says the waiter “It isn’t hot.”
🤣 Best……
Ninety-eight-year-old John was in his last hours as his family gathered around his bed to say Goodbye. His dear wife of sixty-five years was at his side, with the parish priest, the doctor, his Children, Grandchildren and great Grandchildren all gathered around. At that moment he seemed to breathe his last breath and closed his eyes. “Oh, he’s gone, he’s gone, says his dear wife!” Everyone in the room echoed “He’s gone, he’s gone!” The priest says “He’s gone, he’s gone!” The doctor checks John’s heart and says “He’s gone, He’s Gone!” Suddenly John opens his eyes and says “No I AM NOT, I’M STILL HERE, I’M NOT GONE!” “Hush John!” says his dear wife as she pats his hand gently. The Doctor knows Best!
The Importance of Storytellers.
“She couldn’t write a single word—yet she became the most important author in Irish history, and an entire generation of students hated her for it.”
Peig Sayers never held a pen. But she held 375 stories in her mind—perfect, complete, exactly as they’d been told for centuries.
Born in 1873 on Ireland’s storm-battered Dingle Peninsula, Peig grew up in a world lit by firelight. No electricity. No radio. Few books. When darkness came, her family gathered around the hearth, and the old ones spoke: legends of warriors and magic, histories of clans long gone, songs that predated memory itself.
This was how Ireland remembered. Not through writing, but through seanchaíthe—storytellers who carried entire libraries in their minds.
In her twenties, Peig married and moved to the Great Blasket Island, a wind-scraped rock off the Kerry coast where 150 souls scratched out existence through fishing and sheer bloody-mindedness. Winter storms could isolate them for weeks. Children died of illnesses the mainland could treat. Men vanished into the Atlantic and never came home.
Yet every night, the islanders gathered to tell stories.
And Peig? Peig became legendary.
She could recite 375 complete folk tales without notes, without hesitation, preserving every word exactly as she’d learned them. Scholars travelled to that godforsaken rock just to record her voice, knowing they were witnessing something vanishing from the modern world—the last breath of an oral tradition thousands of years old.
In 1936, though Peig couldn’t write, her son Micheál sat beside her and transcribed every word as she spoke. The result was Peig—an autobiography in Irish that didn’t romanticize island life. It told the truth: brutal poverty, devastating loss, backbreaking work, and fierce, unshakable community bonds.
The book became a phenomenon. Eventually, it was required reading for Irish students learning their native language.
And here’s the tragic irony: an entire generation came to hate Peig Sayers.
Students groaned over her hardships. Complained about the difficult Irish. Made her name synonymous with boring homework. Some called Peig “the most hated book in Ireland.”
But they were reading it. They were learning Irish—a language England had tried to erase. They were connecting to their grandparents’ world, even if they didn’t realise it.
In 1953, the government evacuated the Blasket Islands. The old ways were dying. Peig, age 80, left the only home she’d known for six decades. She died five years later in a mainland hospital, her island abandoned to wind and ghosts.
Today, you can visit the Blaskets and walk through ruins of stone cottages where families once lived. But because Peig spoke and someone listened, that world isn’t entirely lost.
Her recordings are studied by scholars worldwide. Irish students still encounter her voice. Folklorists cite her as one of the most crucial sources for traditional Celtic oral culture. Stories that would have died with her generation—legends over 150 years old—survive in her exact words.
Peig Sayers couldn’t read or write. But she could remember.
And in a world determined to forget, that made her more valuable than any scholar with a degree. She was a living library, the voice of a vanishing civilization, and the keeper of stories that would have been lost forever.
The irony? Those Irish students who resented her homework are now adults who understand: Peig wasn’t torturing them with tedious tales. She was handing them their identity, wrapped in the language of their ancestors, preserved by a woman who never wrote a word.
Sometimes history’s most important voices don’t write books. They speak into the darkness, keeping ancient fires burning, waiting for someone to listen.
Free Weekly Morning Smiles
Every week Canadian Storyteller and Published Author Raymond Pierce sends Free, Family Friendly Humorous stories and true personal stories by email. These stories may well bring Joy and Laughter to your day. The personal stories in Raymond’s Morning Smile emails are taken from his first book “Cherished Memories” published in July 2023.
Should you wish to receive a weekly Morning Smiles, please send an email through to Raymond – raymondcssr@gmail.com
If you would like to see more of Raymonds Weekly Smiles, or if you know of someone else that is making a difference for seniors in this world, please contact me – nicci@agedcaremadeeasy.com.au
