To Laugh or Not

     My children are asking me to write something "funny." They tell me that I am too dark and

brooding  and that I should lighten things up a bit. I don't know if I know how to do that.

     I can be a funny person face to face but my writing has always been a way for me to let out the

 monsters. I'm not sure if I'm funny or just eccentric, although they seem to derive a great deal of

pleasure from my one liners. I just don't know how to write about them.

      Now, my girls, they are funny. They can make me laugh so hard it hurts. They are witty and

clever in a way I could never be. Maybe it's their youth, it's certainly not genetic. Let me put it this

way, I can see humor in many things, I can be witty and a wise ass. I just can't write humor. Comic

writers of the world have no need to fear. Here is something written a long time ago out of cynical

frustration with my allergies. Is it funny? Maybe.

Fluff 

I hear the cottonwoods coming after me.

Silent, little puffs of fluff searching me out,

 – they have no sympathy.

 

My eyes swell shut.

My nose closes; it is attempting to run off my face.

I cannot swallow, cannot taste, coughing, wheezing,

there’s lead in my veins.

 

A David and Goliath match if one I have ever seen.

Goliath’s going down, again;

taken out by something so very hard to see.

 

How much would the story change if it went this way instead?

Goliath died from allergies, not a rock to the head.

He did not see it coming; he had closed his eyes to sneeze.

 

A tiny little puff of fluff brought him to his knees.


So, maybe it's cute. Let's try another.

The Cat in the Chinese Hat, and the Consequences

 

 

Came out the door, stepped out of my flat, what should I see, but a cat,

in a Chinese hat. 

 

I walked quickly away, trying not to look back; I really didn’t know what to

think of that. 

 

I moved down the street as I picked up my feet, mumbling aloud, afraid of

what else I might see.

 

I thought to myself as I ambled along about other things that could have

gone wrong. 

 

If all you meet at the start of the day, is a cat on the steps – probably a

stray – wearing a hat from a country far away – 

 

Tickle his chin and rub his back, what does it matter he’s wearing a hat? 

 

Smile smugly as you look around your street, how lucky for you that you both should meet.

 

Pray tell my friends, how many have you met, that could tell the same tale without embellishment? 

 

You are lucky; fate has smiled behind your back.  I know few others who have met the Chinese Hatted Cat. 

 

So, hatted or not, give him some milk.  You will probably never meet another of his ilk. 

 

When he leaves and goes wherever hatted cats go – you my friend, will smile and glow –  

 

For having met this Chinese cat, you now hold the secret to the facts of his hat.

 

Is it funny? Maybe, guess it's open to interpretation. Till next time.........