Now That's Comedy!
This weekend, I took a writing workshop with Shari Caudron, author of What Really Happened: Unexpected Insights From Life’s Uncomfortable Moments. Shari writes smart, witty columns, taking her fears and foibles and transforming them into entertaining little parables. She read to us from her book, which includes stories of such troubles as her irrational fear of puppets, her enormous collection of unread books, and her perfectionist neighbor’s pet fish dying on her watch. Then, to show us how easy it is to transform our own lives into entertaining anecdotes, she gave us hands-on exercises, peppered liberally with advice.
Before starting a timed writing, Shari asked us to list uncomfortable moments in our own lives, anything we needed to digest and examine. “It can be something very small. Think about things that have happened just the past week!"
A subject jumped easily to my mind. One week before, I had gone to a play directed by the man I had come to think of as my surrogate father. Ken was one of my weirdest, but closest friends. I had blown up all over him two months before, when I had finally and suddenly burned out on community theatre, a hobby which had been my great passion for my entire adult life. The burnout was not pretty, and I still think it was partly Ken’s fault. Still, I’d missed him. My real dad died when I was fifteen years old, and it had taken sixteen more years to find a suitable replacement. I loved Ken, and I wanted him back. The best peace offering I could come up with was to show up for opening weekend of the play I had been auditioning for when I got so angry. I planned, I went, I even brought a friend to add size to the tiny audience—and Ken just said the obligatory “Thanks for coming,” and turned away. I emailed him when I got home. No reply. My passion for acting was dead, my first father was dead, and my second one had apparently decided that I was dead to him.
Time was up. Looking over my draft, I couldn’t see anything light or funny. I couldn’t think of a perky moral for this story. All I knew from this was that grief and loss can repeat themselves in more ways, big and small, than anyone wants to imagine.
Thankfully, we were switching gears for a new exercise. “You have to learn to see yourself as a character,” Shari told us. “You’ll want to focus on your imperfections, the parts of your personality that need work. Your readers won’t want to read about someone who is perfect. We all want to read about someone we can relate to, someone like us.”
Imperfections? Boy, have I got imperfections! Focusing again on my past week, I started to write about Brian, my guitar teacher and the best friend I made in my year and a half working for a small publishing company, before I left three months ago to go freelance. With Brian, I learned to love the guitar and to throw and catch (sometimes) a Frisbee. He was a big brother, a confidante, someone I could always count on to stand by me and tell offbeat jokes while we all ate somebody’s birthday cake in the company kitchen. After I left my job, he was my connection to that social circle, and his guitar lesson was always a bright point of human contact in an otherwise solitary week.
He was also the biggest unrequited crush I’d had since the seventh grade. After about six months of mooning over him in silence, I finally blurted out, “Hey, Brian? I have a really big crush on you, and it’s bothering me that you don’t know that.”
“Wow,” Brian said slowly. “That’s really brave. I would never have the guts to tell someone something like that.” He went on to explain very gently—his gentle kindness was one of the traits I admired him for—that he had no interest in getting involved with anyone at that point, not even me. Three months later, I ran into him and his brand-new girlfriend.
My inner crush-ridden 12-year-old knocked over my outer adult, who was apparently just a paper doll to begin with. I started picking at Brian, bitching about his tardiness at a lesson one month before. (“I wouldn’t have stood for that if I hadn’t had a crush on him!” my 12-year-old tiraded.) Finally, after three days exchanging confusing and confused emails, I picked up the paper doll again and explained to Brian what was really going on: I had a stupid, immature crush that I couldn’t turn off, and as I knew I eventually would, I was making a complete ass of myself. My only solution was to stop speaking to him altogether and hope that the crush would someday wear off. I wished him well and thanked him for putting up with me. Brian’s reply, as could be expected, was compassionate and kind. (“Aw! Isn’t he dreamy?” my inner 12-year-old cooed. I tried, unsuccessfully, to figure out how to punch her.)
That was that. Brian was gone. I’d have to finish figuring out how to pick Neil Young’s “The Needle and the Damage Done” by myself, or wait until classes started again at Swallow Hill Folk Music Association in September. Worse, I’d lost a very good friend, all because I couldn’t control my emotions, even ones that had been proven to be pointless. Because I wasn’t 12, I was really a 31-year-old spinster who was becoming desperately lonely, now I was more alone than I would have been if I’d had no hormones at all. I’d made a fool of myself, insulted a dear friend, and lost a now precious weekly dose of human contact. I couldn’t find anything amusing in this story, either. When it was time to stop writing, thank Shari, buy an autographed copy of her book, and go home, I was so heartbroken that I could barely move. I spent the rest of the day in a sorrowful haze. I still couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to read about my pathetic life.
Today, though, I’m remembering one of my estranged theatre dad’s favorite quotes. Mel Brooks once said, “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.” My life, of late, is full of comedy. All I have to do is learn how to see it. I hope writing this column every week will teach me to do just that. You, dear reader, are welcome to come along for the ride.
Before starting a timed writing, Shari asked us to list uncomfortable moments in our own lives, anything we needed to digest and examine. “It can be something very small. Think about things that have happened just the past week!"
A subject jumped easily to my mind. One week before, I had gone to a play directed by the man I had come to think of as my surrogate father. Ken was one of my weirdest, but closest friends. I had blown up all over him two months before, when I had finally and suddenly burned out on community theatre, a hobby which had been my great passion for my entire adult life. The burnout was not pretty, and I still think it was partly Ken’s fault. Still, I’d missed him. My real dad died when I was fifteen years old, and it had taken sixteen more years to find a suitable replacement. I loved Ken, and I wanted him back. The best peace offering I could come up with was to show up for opening weekend of the play I had been auditioning for when I got so angry. I planned, I went, I even brought a friend to add size to the tiny audience—and Ken just said the obligatory “Thanks for coming,” and turned away. I emailed him when I got home. No reply. My passion for acting was dead, my first father was dead, and my second one had apparently decided that I was dead to him.
Time was up. Looking over my draft, I couldn’t see anything light or funny. I couldn’t think of a perky moral for this story. All I knew from this was that grief and loss can repeat themselves in more ways, big and small, than anyone wants to imagine.
Thankfully, we were switching gears for a new exercise. “You have to learn to see yourself as a character,” Shari told us. “You’ll want to focus on your imperfections, the parts of your personality that need work. Your readers won’t want to read about someone who is perfect. We all want to read about someone we can relate to, someone like us.”
Imperfections? Boy, have I got imperfections! Focusing again on my past week, I started to write about Brian, my guitar teacher and the best friend I made in my year and a half working for a small publishing company, before I left three months ago to go freelance. With Brian, I learned to love the guitar and to throw and catch (sometimes) a Frisbee. He was a big brother, a confidante, someone I could always count on to stand by me and tell offbeat jokes while we all ate somebody’s birthday cake in the company kitchen. After I left my job, he was my connection to that social circle, and his guitar lesson was always a bright point of human contact in an otherwise solitary week.
He was also the biggest unrequited crush I’d had since the seventh grade. After about six months of mooning over him in silence, I finally blurted out, “Hey, Brian? I have a really big crush on you, and it’s bothering me that you don’t know that.”
“Wow,” Brian said slowly. “That’s really brave. I would never have the guts to tell someone something like that.” He went on to explain very gently—his gentle kindness was one of the traits I admired him for—that he had no interest in getting involved with anyone at that point, not even me. Three months later, I ran into him and his brand-new girlfriend.
My inner crush-ridden 12-year-old knocked over my outer adult, who was apparently just a paper doll to begin with. I started picking at Brian, bitching about his tardiness at a lesson one month before. (“I wouldn’t have stood for that if I hadn’t had a crush on him!” my 12-year-old tiraded.) Finally, after three days exchanging confusing and confused emails, I picked up the paper doll again and explained to Brian what was really going on: I had a stupid, immature crush that I couldn’t turn off, and as I knew I eventually would, I was making a complete ass of myself. My only solution was to stop speaking to him altogether and hope that the crush would someday wear off. I wished him well and thanked him for putting up with me. Brian’s reply, as could be expected, was compassionate and kind. (“Aw! Isn’t he dreamy?” my inner 12-year-old cooed. I tried, unsuccessfully, to figure out how to punch her.)
That was that. Brian was gone. I’d have to finish figuring out how to pick Neil Young’s “The Needle and the Damage Done” by myself, or wait until classes started again at Swallow Hill Folk Music Association in September. Worse, I’d lost a very good friend, all because I couldn’t control my emotions, even ones that had been proven to be pointless. Because I wasn’t 12, I was really a 31-year-old spinster who was becoming desperately lonely, now I was more alone than I would have been if I’d had no hormones at all. I’d made a fool of myself, insulted a dear friend, and lost a now precious weekly dose of human contact. I couldn’t find anything amusing in this story, either. When it was time to stop writing, thank Shari, buy an autographed copy of her book, and go home, I was so heartbroken that I could barely move. I spent the rest of the day in a sorrowful haze. I still couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to read about my pathetic life.
Today, though, I’m remembering one of my estranged theatre dad’s favorite quotes. Mel Brooks once said, “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.” My life, of late, is full of comedy. All I have to do is learn how to see it. I hope writing this column every week will teach me to do just that. You, dear reader, are welcome to come along for the ride.
posted by Anita @ 9:15 PM
1 comments
