/ day two of me me meme

Oh, it is a crisis of conscience around here in reading my posts and realizing that somewhere along the way I must have traded in my humor for all my good looks and modesty, because my god I always thought I was funny. But I keep finding myself looking longingly at poop jokes when I visit the storefronts of other blogs, how desperate I am for even the cheapest of smiles. I swore I would never do bathroom humor, either, because I always considered myself above that, and yet sadly, in the men’s room today, I kept hoping someone would make an unseemly noise, or feet beneath the stall would accidentally bump or I would recognize a phone number scratched into the wall or god, anything with a cell phone call, constipation, senator-on-page relations, god, anything.

It is hard to wake up and realize you no longer make people laugh. Clowns must get this all the time in seeing their own mispainted reflection in the frightened teardrops shed by unthankful children’s birthday guests.

That said, I think it is finally time to realize that no matter how much I want to be like everyone else, I am just different and have to adjust. I can only be funny in my own way and laugh when no one is looking and when they turn around to see if you were laughing just stare right at them deadpan, try to convince them that yes, the voices are in your head. Then curl up crying in the corner when they leave and make poop noises underneath your armpit. No se.

Today ah am pickin a post that started out funny because love is funny at first, what with all the teeth bared from smiling, but then the thrill is gone and the skies go dark with the seriousness and the words you allow escape when the clouds are nigh are like raindrops wasted on the desert. I hear the southwest blooms once a decade with a generation’s regret that hardly a soul gets to appreciate. And then spends the next 9 years wondering why no one laughs at his jokes.

* * *

damned lies

I encourage lying among my children because I find it among the most useful of our distinctions from the animal kingdom and these lessons manifest on the mornings I work from home, where I ask over breakfast (PIZZA POCKETS), 'WHAT DID YOU DREAM LAST NIGHT?' In the beginning, the children would try to pass the most painful banalities off on me, as though I cared about a dream where you 'got a bicycle' or 'went to Chuck E. Cheese.'

YOU CALL THAT A DREAM? I would scream. NOW THIS, and here is where I jump upon the kitchen island, remove my shirt and fly head first into the couch, THIS IS A DREAM!

And their landscapes are suddenly richer, and sometimes darker, sinister and yes, painful, they can be that, but they cannot be ordinary or dull or the kind of painful which makes you want to continue on sleeping, how close to your unfulfilled life they compare. They are allowed to dream in black and white, but must also dream in colors, but not the colors of their days. Upon waking, I want them to ask, 'Why is the sky green?' Because it makes surfacing from underwater feel like drowning, it makes flying feel like falling.

"I dreamed I was counting frogs. One, two, three." She crouches onto all fours and starts to hop around the dining room. "I dreamed I was a frog."

"I dreamed a man was chasing me." He steadies the cereal spoon in his hand. "But the ground opened up and swallowed him whole."

They ask me what I dreamed, not yet aware that the teacher is well known for failing his own lessons. But I have a cheat sheet. "I dreamed my spirit reached the end of the universe, where there is a small room containing the souls of all the people I miss. And we shut the door, turned on the lights and danced."

Last night, after working til 11pm, I downed a glass of wine, a couple of sleeping pills, and proceeded to dream about being in a meeting, then returning to my desk to type up the notes, then submitting a report that no one really liked and no one really loved. I dreamed I was working.

I'll be damned if I ever tell them the truth of that.