What I always thinks helps with life is not to take anything to seriously. Only get annoyed at the things that are seriously a problem, otherwise, take things lightly.
To take things lightly, it helps to have a sense of humor, and that is never something that I have lacked. For many years, I have always made jokes, often a play on words, such as one that my mother relates:
"Do kiwis come from North Kiwia or South Kiwia?"
When I was eight, I started turning my sense of humor into comics that I would write for myself. The main character was a dog named Shoegerhith. This even fit with my humor of words, as the name was a combination between the comics Shoe, Garfield, and Heathcliff. I originally experimented with Suegerhith, but I decided Shoegerhith fit him better.
Comics are especially useful for things that if they happened would be funny. Such as:
"Uncle Joe, why are we eating off the analog wall clocks?"
"No wonder it was so hard to see what time it was today!"
Sometimes I can just use humor in the comics, or I can just say them to people as I think of them. Often, things will strike my humor that other people might not notice or think of, such as commercials:
"We were Maine's first credit union," the advertisement said.
"Yes," I added, "We were Maine's first credit union, but before us Maine did have some credit confederates."
Sometimes humor on words can come unintentionally, like a baseball practice this year. It was pretty cold out, and all the players were wearing long sleeves except for me, as I can withstand cold well.
"Tomas," one of the players asked, "Why aren't you wearing long sleeves?"
"I don't need them."
"Aren't you cold?"
"No."
"How are you not cold? It's freezing out!"
"I never get cold."
"Why are you never cold Tomas?"
"Because I'm always hot."
At that the whole team cracked up.
"Can't argue with that logic," one player said.
But without a sense of humor, something falling over for example, could be much more of a big deal than it is if you are laid back enough to see the humor in the situation, and calmly remedy it, as I have attempted to do all my life.
This is done and complete if you want it to be--I say that because I can make suggestions only. I can't argue for a new direction; that goes beyond what a teacher has the right to require.
ReplyDeleteThat said, this seems unsatisfying to me, not because of what's here, but because of what isn't. We reach the end, and, having followed you through some setup, a joke or two, and a good shaggy dog anecdote, we await....
We await the crossfire, the fly in the ointment, the sticking point, the serious situation that either underlines your reliance on humor or shows its limits.
That's not a direction I have ever seen you take in your writing, and I certainly don't want to demand something that makes you unhappy to write. And I'm not doing that. But that sense of incompletion and dissatisfaction is what I am left with here.