I use to be good at memorizing and telling jokes. I always had good delivery. I guess I was the Dominoes of joke telling in my younger days. Yet, as time rolled on, my ability to memorize deteriorated and a sense of chaos overtook my neural pathways. Thus, whenever I am funny, it occurs like a car accident after a very long road trip. First, I am completely incapable of being succinct. Brevity is my enemy and I shall fight it to the very last word. Perhaps this is a genetic condition, a progressive incurable disease since it seems to be getting worse and worse with age. I take longer and longer to tell a story. It drives my husband crazy. I actually can see his eyes darting up and down, right and left trying to physically follow what I am saying. I bet my talking makes him dizzy.
“I thought I was going to hear about: FILL IN BLANK”. I can tell he is beginning to feel sick (the dizziness). I began speaking about one thing and then slowly shifted into twenty other unrelated details. “I am getting there I assure him.” All of a sudden we have switched roles and now I am the stubborn MALE who refuses to ask for directions even though I know I am as lost as Alice in Wonderland. “I will get to IT” I assure him. “Just wait, there details are important even if they don’t seem related.” Perhaps I tell stories this way because I have a poor sense of direction and cannot tell North from South or East from West, or North from West for that matter. So I need landmarks. I wish all McDonalds didn’t look alike. That would really help. Also, saying “take a left at the Gas Station” can easily become confusing if you are heading in the wrong direction to begin with. Where was I?
Oh, yeah, I signed up for a class. I am going “Back to School.” Hello Rodney!!! I need to find a way to make money and I don’t want to re-enter the work force in a “job”. I want to create a new way of “making a living” for myself. I just want to be able to make enough money to send two reasonably intelligent children through 8 years of college (I am thinking Graduate Degrees are going to be necessary).
I am not going to try and go back to my “previous profession” in fundraising simply because I never really “chose” that profession. It just found me after I couldn’t find myself after college. (Another Long Story – tune it tomorrow for what I think about “finding your passion ). And while being a full time mother has allowed me the luxury of shaping and nurturing (okay, sustaining) two children, it has turned into a zero sum/gain gig. What goes in, goes out, pocket book and otherwise. I guess I just summed up my marriage. Okay, so the alternatives are work in a regular job at a book store or some office somewhere (did I mention I have no computer skills other writing in word perfect) or going back to school to become an English Teacher or a Social Worker or….
A Comic! Yeah! Way more fun to have homework that tells you to watch comics on YouTube so you can see how they do it then it would be to go register at CLC or Harper . Why stay up reading books on how to teach and sit in lecture halls surrounded by people half my age (less than half if I am going to be honest about my age) who have been out partying half the night and still have better retention for facts and figures than I do. In the end, I would be job hunting for a teaching position in an economy that has caused all Stated and Local Governments to dramatically slash their budgets. I might get lucky and get a job, with insurance and benefits and the bull crap political tensions that accompany all work places. Or I can delude myself into thinking I could produce an income by standing up in front of a bunch of strangers talking endlessly while they drink and hope that on occasion I can make them laugh or drink more (after all that is how these clubs make their money, isn’t it?)
Where was I? Oh yeah. I signed up for a class on How to be a Stand Up Comic. One of the homework assignments was to post a joke on Facebook each day. But I don’t do jokes anymore. I can only do “stories” and hope people find something funny in them along the way. You see “the Long and Winding Road” the Beatles put me on in 1970 when I was only 10 years old did not lead me to just One Door, It is that long never ending door after door after door I find myself standing in front of… It went from being the Long and Winding Road I was on to the Long Winded Story I was always trying to spit out.
