So a friend died this week. She was a wonderful person who was just barely 50 but caught a bad break with a rare disease. It just stinks.
It stinks for her husband and her son. It stinks for her family. It stinks for her friends.
But those of us who knew Carmen will think of her for the rest of our lives. She played piano, loved flowers and desserts, and loved her husband and son.
One of my favorite things about her was that she loved jokes, and to laugh, and stories.
She subscribed to The Mickey Picayune. And she had a 100% open rate. One-hundred percent!
This is not a fun way to start a Picayune but I wanted to get that out there because who knows how this thing will turn out.
She also loved tequila.
This makes me think of why I love jokes, and telling stories, and laughing. It makes life lighter and easier to bear when you have stories and laughter, but why do I like making jokes and telling stories? Honestly, it’s something of a compulsion.
It’s especially interesting because not everyone likes them—or, at least, they think there’s a time and a place for jokes and stories. Work, for instance, is not a place I can tell a lot of my jokes, and only some of my stories.
School is another place that doesn’t usually embrace the making of the jokes.
I had one teacher in particular, Fred, our 11th grade English teacher, who didn’t like the jokes I made.
Fred was bald. We never mocked him at the time. There’s no shame in being bald and some guys rock baldness.
Fred did not rock it. Fred looked like ostrich egg with glasses and a mustache. Maybe that’s your thing, so more power to both of you.
What I’m really saying is that we could have made fun of Fred, but we didn’t (at least not to his face). Whereas Fred once declared in front of the entire class that I had the brain of an amoeba. But would an amoeba have gotten that big of a laugh?
I had said something stupid in class and that’s what prompted Fred’s hurtful comment. I really didn’t mind his attack because I had gotten a laugh when I said the stupid thing. You go amoeba brain!
I remember the specific moment in 2nd grade when I said something that got a laugh at school for the first time. I don’t recall what I said; I just recall that feeling of glory when I cracked everyone up.
The wisecrack, whatever it was, popped in my head and I thought, “That might get a laugh.” So I spit it out before anyone else had a chance to comment, and before the opportunity had passed.
This all happened in the blink of an eye: a natural setup for the joke, the punchline popping up in my head, and deciding it might just work if I said it quickly enough.
I’ve basically been chasing that feeling every hour of every day since that moment in 2nd grade.
All through grade school, I was gratified that the teachers appreciated my humor. In fact, they often remarked to my parents during parent-teacher conferences that, “Mickey is a joy to have in class.”
High praise for a kid with an amoeba-addled brain.
In the coming years, however, I had to up my game to be the funny guy. For one thing, the teachers are more cynical in high school. They’ve seen hundreds of wise-cracking assholes come and go, year after year, and they’re not amused by hacks without timing, or shock-comics blurting vulgarities.
Unless you wanted to spend the semester in the vice principal’s office getting your ass paddled, you had to know how to land a punchline.
I had (still have) two older brothers—both of whom were (still are) funny—so I had learned a lot from them about the teachers, current events, and lingo that gave me a slight edge in the classroom.
On the first day of Advanced Analytics (a calculus precursor) in 11th grade, I cracked a joke and got a big laugh. The teacher gave me a second look and said, “You’re Steve Hadick’s little brother, right? He was funny, but his jokes hurt, like he was throwing darts.”
True enough. I basically had Jackie Gleason and Don Rickles for brothers.
Also, there was more competition for being funny. There were plenty of guys and girls cracking wise by freshman year, so you had to be alert for the opportunity and quick with the delivery.
Of course, there’s always room for more funny, and when one person says something funny, it warms up the crowd for the next thing.
That may have been why Fred, our teacher, attacked me directly, as that particular class was like open mic night at The Improv, and we often took the jokes a bit too far for poor, bald Fred.
To be fair, Fred wasn’t the only teacher who got fed up with me. I got tossed out of English for a week in 8th grade, biology and geometry in 9th grade, science in 10th grade, and driving class in 11th grade. Fred, to his credit, never sent any of us to the principal’s office, preferring to deal with us directly.
As I said, I’m still chasing that rush of getting a laugh. That’s one of the aims of this newsletter, and it’s basically how I live my life. I take my responsibilities seriously, but I also take my jokes seriously.
Laughter makes all of this day-to-day silliness a little easier to bear. Carmen, as I mentioned, had a great laugh. She could crack-wise with the best of us. She will be missed.
Meanwhile, at My Writing Desk…
My new novel, The Spreadsheet, is a crime thriller that I’m hoping is a fun story to read, possibly the sort of thing you read on the beach if you’re someone who can read on the beach (I can’t). I finished a round of revisions this past week and then pushed out an ebook to share with friends who were leaving for vacation, as I trust their opinion on the story (no pressure Leon and Linda).
Pushing out an ebook in a hurry is kind of like pushing out poop when your body is not ready to poop. You take a seat and bear down, hoping things happen as they’re supposed to before you burst a blood vessel from the pressure.
Maybe You’d Like
This week I’m in a group promotion called: Quirky Familiars, Mislaid Magic: An All-Genre Giveaway for Funny Paranormal, Horror, and Fantasy
https://storyoriginapp.com/to/nPWdP1I
Next Picayune
I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with more stories and whatnot. Hope your hug your friends and family until then…
All the best,
Mickey
P.S. For those of you who picked up a copy of Ashley Undone recently, nothing helps like reviewing the book. It can be anywhere you’re comfortable reviewing books, and here’s a link to the Amazon page where you can do that if you don’t know anything better. (Thanks in advance.)