Can You Dig It
By Leeuna Foster
Erma Bombeck made it look so easy. So do Dave Barry, Patrick McManus and a host of other great humorists. But despite the ease with which they make us laugh, writing humor is tough. Humor is also subjective. What might cause one person to fall off their chair laughing might make another person groan and stop reading, or worse yet, it might even make them angry. (That's the funny thing about humor, not everyone has a sense of it.)
Most humor writers are relatively happy people. They are well adjusted and they have learned to take the bad things in life and find a little humor in them. That is no small task and it keeps getting more difficult as time goes by. We wring our hands over global warming, a hole in the ozone, and cellulite. Gasoline prices keep soaring, The Bush Administration's popularity keeps lowering and job security is about as easy to find as a needle in a haystack. Some days, life just seems to hit the fan and there is no humor left... It disappeared with our government health benefits.
Today was that way. I awakened with a terrible case of PMS (Plotting My Story), my dog gave me flea-bite-us, the rain kept pouring down...inside the house... through a hole in the roof. One of the arms fell off the sofa, the kids broke another window, and some moron kept calling my cell phone trying to order a pizza. After several attempts to convince him that "No this is NOT Pizza Hut," I gave up and took his order.
Through it all, I kept up a brave attempt at writing a humor piece on time management. I rattled my brains, trying to shake loose a few witticisms, while visions of pizza and chocolate cream filled donuts danced in my head.
I have tried to ignore the slight overhang around my chair and the way my jeans are pinching my waistline. Still I keep hearing that ugly four-letter word "diet"! It buzzes in my ear like the announcement of a blue-light special at K-Mart.
I swore off dieting six months ago. After two months of eating nothing but weeds and roots, I gave up one night, fell to my knees upon the kitchen floor, threw down the radish I was gnawing on and raised my fist in the air. In my best Southern accent I proclaimed "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again!"
Why do I need hip bones anyway? I'm over forty - finally! (It takes a while for a woman to get over turning forty). However, when I looked in the mirror this morning, my reflection gave a whole new meaning to the term gross anatomy. A shock such as this is bound to wipe away one's last vestige of humor. This would have been a good time for a reality check, but mine got lost in the mail.
"Life stinks," I said aloud to no one in particular. "What's funny about that?" I decided to throw myself a sorrow soiree and go for a walk in the rain. I grabbed my umbrella and stomped out the door.
As I walked in the rain, splashing through mud puddles and thoroughly soaking my tennis shoes, a car approached from the opposite direction. Just then a squirrel scurried from a tree and into the street. The driver swerved toward me to avoid hitting the squirrel. I dived for the curb just in time to avoid the tires, but not the spray of water. The squirrel stopped only long enough to give me a scornful look, then he was gone. This was the proverbial straw. I sat down on the sodden sidewalk, put my chin in my hands and burst into laughter. Yes...laughter. that seemed the only logical thing to do.
I sat there for awhile pondering the ways of life and finally things began to take focus. No matter how bad a situation seems at the time, it could always be a lot worse. Perhaps it is this philosophy that helps the great humor writers of today, continue to make us laugh. Perhaps they posses a more profound understanding of human nature. Even though we may think laughter has deserted us, we can always find another chuckle or two buried somewhere beneath the anxiety and stress of daily life.
Often we just need to dig a little deeper to find the humor in life. So what, if we may need to use a backhoe sometimes?
We'll find it if we just keep digging.
Leeuna Foster has been writing for two decades. Her fiction and poetry have won several awards. She is also a regular contributer to StoryTime Tapestry and a syndicated columnists. Her latest book, Hangin' With the Rednecks is now available in print or in ebook form. Visit her website http://www.southernfriedwriters.com for details on how to purchase your copy...don't wait for the movie!