And It Goes a Little Something Like This...

I did not want to get out of bed this morning.  My bed is comfy; I feel like an angel sleeping in a fluffy cloud.  Okay, so maybe I’m not an angel, and I’ve never slept in a fluffy cloud, but it feels the way I imagine it feels to sleep in a fluffy cloud.  

Yet, I forced myself to crawl out of my heavenly place—as I do every day—and almost every day, it goes something like this:

As I walk out of my bedroom, I get slapped by my dopey dog’s gator-like tail and almost trip over her, who by the way pretends she doesn’t understand English commands, but somehow can read English thoughts—if they involve her receiving treats, going for a walk, or going for a ride.  Then I open the door to my 16-year-old son’s room and get smacked across the face with the smell of dirty teenage gym laundry.  I wake the kid and then let the dog out to take care of her business.  I groggily try to jog across the yard to grab her before she jumps the fence—in yet another of her escape attempts.  I drag her back into the house.  I make coffee, and I wake the kid again.  I make breakfast, eat, and pick out my clothes.  And, I wake the kid again.  I walk into the bathroom, trip over the kid’s dirty clothes that he left strewn across the bathroom floor the night before.  I take a shower, brush my teeth, comb my hair, and dream of dumping a bucket of ice water on the kid to wake him.  I decide to be nice and instead yelled at him “WAKE UP!” to which he grouchily responds, “You don’t have to yell.”  I force myself to remember the little boy who used to live with me—the one that this big grump replaced—the little boy who woke the first time I went into his room and who thought I was the greatest thing that ever graced the planet.  I’ve heard rumors that that someday that sweet little boy will return in a man-sized version, but I have a hard time believing it.

Then I go into the kitchen, feed the dog, dream of the day the kid’s grown, out of the house, and has his own teenagers, give the dog water, fix my lunch, and then walk down the hall to remind my now half-dressed son that we need to leave in 15 minutes.  I check my e-mail, pack all items I need for the workday, and threaten to make the kid go to school half-dressed if he isn’t ready in five minutes.  Exactly five minutes later, he saunters down the hall, shoes and unmatched socks in hand, teeth unbrushed, and announces that he is ready to go. 

“Where’s your backpack?  Did you eat something for breakfast?  Did you grab something for lunch?  What about your teeth?  Do you have your gym clothes?  Wallet?  Cell phone?  Did you take your vitamins?”

“Oh, I forgot.”

He just said two of my five least favorite words: “I forgot” and “I don’t know.”  I look at my Houdini dog with a look that says, “And you, with all your escape antics, are the easy one.”  She looks back at me as if to say, “Yeah, I know, so can I have a treat?”

The kid walks back to the bathroom brushes his teeth, and decides he needs to use the restroom.  Five minutes later, he comes out, goes to his room to get the rest of his stuff, returns, and says, “I can’t find my wallet or my phone.” 

“Fine.  Then you will have to walk to my office after school.”

“I’ll just walk to the gym,” he says and walks back down the hallway.  On his return, he says, “I found my wallet and phone.”

“Amazing that you can find things when your freedom is at risk,” I say as I feel my lips purse, my nostrils flare, and my right eyebrow arch.

By now, you’re probably thinking, that I should leave without him.  Well, let me tell you, the thought runs through my mind almost daily.  But, then I remember when I was 16.  I would have thought I won the lottery if my mom left without me on a school day.  What kid wouldn’t want a day to sleep in, talk on the phone, draw, play video games, go wherever he wants, and watch TV?  Nope.  This kid isn’t getting off that easy.  He hates school, so leaving him would be the same treat it would have been for me.  If I need to, I will let him be late, march him into the principal’s office, and make him tell the principal why he’s tardy.

“Let’s go,” I say, and I tell the dog, “Please, no escape attempts today.”

I finally get the kid and his bare, size 15 pedal flappers into the car, where he begins to put on his shoes and socks.

“Son, you are 16.  We have this same challenge every day.  You need to get it together, because I’m not going to be that mom who calls you when you’re 40 and runs through the list with you to make sure you are ready every morning.”

As I finish speaking, I realize that if I didn’t know otherwise, I would think he’s completely deaf and blind and doesn’t know I exist. 

We are two strangers inching our way through rush-hour traffic in near silence—me who knows nothing, and my teenager who knows everything—at least that’s his opinion.  The only noise comes from the radio and the sound that leaks from his iPod earphones. 

I pull up to his school to drop him off.  “Have a good day.  I love you,” I tell him, while thinking to myself, “but the jury’s out on whether or not I like you today.”

“Mmm…hmm,” he grunts as he slams the car door.

I drive away to meet my carpool partner, who also happens to be my friend and my parenting guidance counselor. 

“Good morning, sunshine!”  She says as she pulls up.  “Do you need some coffee?  How is Kut Master Kane?” (Kut Master Kane is my son’s DJ name.  He’s got it all planned; he’s going to be an international success as a DJ, and he doesn’t understand why he needs school to do it.)

I pass on the offer to get coffee.  We drive to the parking lot and meander to the office, where on our walk to and through the building, several smiling faces and hellos greet us. 

I sit down in my quiet cubicle, put on my earphones, turn on my iPod, and escape into the peaceful world of writing, researching, and editing, and I realize that although I wouldn’t trade the kid or the dog for anything in the world, I need breaks from them.  I need to feel a sense of achievement separate from them and that I’m contributing to the greater good, and as a public servant, I can do that.  Home and work offer me the balance I need.

Now why didn’t I want to get out of bed this morning?

Funkywinkerbean and Me

Knock, Knock. Who’s there? Orange. Orange who? Orange you gonna say, “Hi?” Don’t you love it? Who doesn’t love a good laugh? Okay, so it’s a really corny joke. It’s probably one of the first jokes we learn in school. Then we run home so eagerly to tell our parents, only to have them say with the most deadpan face, “I was telling that joke when I was your age.” They probably were. And, their parents probably said the same thing to them, with the same deadpan look when they ran home eagerly from school to share their new comedic line. But, for whatever reason, most humans love the opportunity to laugh, including me. Humor and laughter are and have been one of the few constants in my life. I never find laughter and humor boring.

My first true awareness of humor was as a child. I was five years old, and school always came very easy for me. My parents wanted me to go to summer school. Of course, I thought it was because I was so smart that I got to go to summer school, and unlike the “slow” kids, I had a choice. Summer school was for either really dumb kids who needed the extra help, or the really smart kids who were so smart they blessed the school by being there for the summer. I most certainly was not one of the dumb kids.

Being a parent myself, I now realize that neither of these is necessarily true. I think my parents wanted me to go to summer school, because they couldn’t fathom the idea of a whole three months with me home all day—just me and my parents. goodness, the thought of it makes even me shudder.

So, there I was, the summer between kindergarten and first grade, so excited to be one of the privileged kids who blessed the school with my presence during the summer months. Everything was going great. I loved it. On the third day of summer school, one of my little classmates had the teacher looking at her. I heard the teacher say something about chicken pox. Of course, I had no idea what chicken pox was. Well, my naiveté soon changed. My little classmate was so kind and generous; she decided to share her pox with me. Needless to say, I didn’t last too lnog in summer school.

My parents had my great-grandmother, Gram, babysit me while my pox ran their course. That same summer, Gram also babysat my cousin, Robbie. Robbie and I couldn’t read, but we loved to have someone read to us. We had Gram read the Sunday comics. We found them mildly entertaining, that is until Gram read us the title of one of the comics—Funkywinkerbean.

Funkywinkerbean—go ahead and say it. I dare you to try to say it three times without so much as cracking a grin. If you can do it, you are a tougher person than I am or ever was.

When Robbie and I heard the name Funkywinkerbean, we laughed hard. We could not stop. We laughed that kind of laugh that makes your stomach and cheeks ache, makes your eyes water, makes you look like you’re crying and makes you drool. We had Gram read Funkywinkerbean over and over for the rest of the day. It was like an addition. We looked forward to Funkywinkerbean every day. We were like little addicts, and Funkywinkerbean was our fix.

Funkywinkerbean always stayed with me and made me consciously aware of how pleasurable laughter can be. I wanted to be able to make people laugh the way Funkywinkerbean had made Robbie and me laugh. I began to really observe what make people laugh. I would listen attentively to my parents’ and other adults’ conversations. I wanted to master the art of humor.

As the years passed, I became more proficient in my art. During my adolescent and preadolescent years, not only did I become more humorous, but I also became more sarcastic.

Oh, sarcasm—we are all familiar with it. We all know a few sarcastic people. Those people who can make everyone laugh. Unfortunately, it is usually at the expense of someone else. The one victim I terrorized more than anyone else was Sony.

Sony was a really sweet girl a few years younger than I was. She was non-confrontational, and albeit, she was very intelligent, her wit was not very quick. Sony and I had a few mutual friends, so unfortunately for Sony, we were often in each other’s company. Of course, I would tear Sony apart. “Sony, when you laugh, your eyes disappear. Can you even see when you laugh?” I didn’t care that Sony wore glasses and that without them, she was legally blind. I honestly can’t remember any of the other things I used to say to Sony. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that everyone around us was laughing hysterically, and I was the cause of their laughter.

During this period, I never once thought my cynicism was my way of hiding—hiding my vulnerabilities and insecurities. As time passed, I only got better. I became more quick-witted and more sharp-tongued.

In high school, I met Tom. Tom was a male version of me, except he had a few more years of experience under his belt. We were both scared of being hurt and terrified of our own insecurities and fear of rejection. We had what is commonly called a love-hate relationship. Tom was my first love, but there was no way I was going to let myself be hurt, so I used every weapon I had to defend myself. The most powerful of these weapons was my sarcasm and my humor. That is until one night with a large group of friends, I verbally tore Tom up one side and down the other. Sure, everyone was laughing, including Tom. Later that night, after everyone left, Tom repeated everything I said to him—verbatim. To this day, I still remember all those words he spoke. They have stuck with me better than the many times my parents told me “never talk to strangers.” After Tom repeated all the cruel things I said to him, he told me, “Ange, you can rip someone up, tear them apart, and leave them for dead all within a matter of moments. Why don’t you just try listening some time and not being so quick to put someone to their death?”

Although I didn’t change my ways, those words have stayed with me forever. It devastated me to hear the things I said to him. Knowing I was capable of saying those things to someone I cared for, then what was I capable of if I had no feelings for someone?

As the years passed, without realizing it, I had begun to take Tom’s advice. Maybe it was maturity. Maybe I was losing the fear of feeling vulnerable. As I got older, I became less sarcastic. I still had it in me; I just didn’t feel the need to use it as often as I once did. It was similar to having a gun in your house. If you are really scared, the gun is loaded. If you aren’t scared, then you still have the gun, only it’s locked up and unloaded. You feel much better just knowing the gun is there if you ever need it. I stayed that way until I moved out of my family’s home. I guess moving out on my own gave the courage to feel fear and vulnerability.

When I moved out on my own, I moved in with my girlfriends, Nicki and Jackie. We had a great time. I still look back on those days as some of the happiest times of my life. Jackie and I quickly became best friends. We hung out all the time. It was while I was hanging out with Jackie that I found a new way to play with my humor. Jackie and I would do things that were simply silly. There was no victim. If ever there were one, we were our own victims.

One evening, Jackie and I were waiting for some friends to get off work. They were running late, and we had time to kill. We decided to put on a dance show for all the people in the Downtown Plaza. It didn’t matter that I had never been a dancer. There we were in all our glory, two girls in our early twenties, singing and dancing to the Village People’s YMCA. Let me add that the song and dance were performed a capella. I have no idea if the passers-by thought we were entertaining, but Jackie and I were laughing in the same hysterical way that Robbie and I has laughed the first time we heard Funkywinkerbean. I had rediscovered my childhood humor.

I no longer needed a victim to be funny, and I found that I could still make people laugh or at least smile. It was a wonderful feeling. If I ever did need a victim, I was the victim. I learned to poke fun at myself. I quickly realized that people responded better when they were laughing and there was no victim in the humor.

I still seize the opportunity to make people laugh, only now it is with some clown-show antics or silly, corny, kid-type humor.

Once at work, one of my mangers got a promotion. During the meeting announcing her promotion, I ran through the conference room door with pom-poms. The pom-poms were made from the perforated sides of computer paper, and they were bound by rubber bands. As I ran through the conference room, shook the pom-poms in the air and sang a little cheer, congratulating my manager. The entire staff at the meeting began laughing. It took the edge off all of us being called into a meeting, because meetings had been traditionally become something to fear and be nervous about.

As a result of my victimless humor, I have been given the moniker “Sunshine” because I “always bring sunshine to a situation.” I know. It’s corny, and I sometimes find myself thinking, “what, are you crazy? If this is sunshine, then I’d hate to see your gloom and doom.” Instead, I bite my tongue, say a gracious thank you, and feel a little warm, knowing that I brought some happiness to someone’s day. It’s a good feeling knowing you have a positive impact on a person’s day.

It has been through the use of humor, both positive and negative, that I have become who I am today. I still sometimes hide behind my humor, and I often laugh when I am nervous or feel shy. However, for the most part, humor has given me the strength and confidence to be my true self. Humor and laughter have been constants in my life. I often get bored and restless with so many things, but laughter is one of the few things I have never gotten tired of. Humor has helped me make new friends and provided things to share with old friends. Humor has given me strength when I felt the most weak and vulnerable, and it has helped me feed my imagination. Humor is a nice ice breaker, and I can use it to disarm people. It is really difficult for people to be angry and offensive when you make them laugh.

Humor and laughter have been my life boats to jump into when I was drowning, as well as my gun when I was feeling scared and vulnerable. However, humor and laughter have ultimately allowed me to be relatively stress free, friendly, and approachable. It is humor that has been the “twist of lime” in my personality. It is what gives me zing and makes me unique. It is what I have become known for. After all, when people call me silly, crazy, or a nut, I always tell them it must be my dad. You know, he had a big orange Afro, a red bulbous nose, and he wore big floppy shoes.