Take a good look at the cartoon next to this column. Those of you who think that a four-story-tall elephant in a Viking hat is moving to Poulsbo, please raise your hands.

No one?

Interesting.

While representatives of Wal-Mart, who may or may not be moving a mega store to Olhava (we’re still not sure on this one) might not see much humor in the idea, it’s likely that others will catch the wit.

The point is that whether its a gigantic elephant or a paved North Kitsap, the idea of our cartoons is to take a lighter look at the world we live in.

A lighter look at ourselves.

As we lean on the brink of war, the economy flounders and things go awry, we feel it is important that we all maintain a sense of humor. If we lose our ability to find humor in life’s daily trials, we’ve lost quite a bit.

We’re not pointing any individual fingers at anyone here as there have been all sorts of interesting phone calls following all sorts of different cartoons as of late.

The synopsis is that we feel our readers are either taking our cartoons a little too seriously or taking themselves too seriously.

Either way, it’s not a good thing.

Especially now, when a smile, a laugh, a joke can go a long way to lighten the tension as we all wait and see what transpires in Iraq and beyond.

These are serious times. Times when all may seem to be lost are surely down the road.

We’re not saying to ignore the dangers of living in a soon-to-be war-torn world. They are real. We’re not saying to ignore the ills of our own society. They are real, too.

What we are saying, North Kitsap, is we all need to lighten up a bit about the “small things.” There’s an old saying that laughter is the best medicine, sometimes we just forget to take it.