Maybe the past two weeks of long hours and repetitive tasks broke me down, but I am feeling a little less psychotic about my job these days. It just occurred to me this week that part of my discomfort may rest in the fact that with different receptionists and teachers on the schedule every day of the week, not only do the practical aspects of the job – training, implementing new procedures, etc. – take an eternity, but the process of adjusting socially does as well. After a little over four months, I still feel the way I usually do in week three or so of a new job. Even my own adjustment time is greatly protracted, and that is very stressful.
But what keeps tugging at me every time I sit down to write or think about sitting down to write is that the stuff in my head isn’t funny at ALL, and that’s just not me. I have always thought that I am one of the funniest people I know. No one cracks me up like me! Most people I know think I’m funny, too: smart and funny, smart and funny, those are my top two adjectives. But it just ain’t happenin’ folks, and it seems to have coincided with starting my job. Not that my job is to blame, but what the hell.
So, I’ve decided that throughout the day I am going to write down funny things that have happened to me, just because, just for my own entertainment.
1. One night in college I was sitting outside my apartment waiting for a friend to pick me up. A pick-up truck drove past with a bunch of small trees in the back. The thought that popped into my head was, “That guy is taking his trees for a ride!” I sat there laughing by myself for a while; when my friend showed up, she wanted to know what was so funny, and it took me a few minutes to get out my stupid thought. Ever since then, every time I see a pick up truck full of anything, I think, “That guy is taking his trees / chairs / buckets, etc. for a ride!”
2. I was walking down Commonwealth Avenue in Boston one day in 1994, when I noticed three guys walking toward me. They were high school age, dressed all tough – big pants, the whole deal, chests puffed out, full of teenage bravado. As they walked past, one of them tripped over his own feet. His jeans came down as he fell, revealing his purple underpants to all of Kenmore Square. The other two guys and I all stopped and pointed and laughed at him. He thought it was hilarious, too, and sat on the sidewalk laughing with us. This was the moment I learned one of life’s great truths, and I hold it dear to this day: No matter how old you are, who you are, or where you go, underpants are funny.
3. My ex-husband talked in his sleep. Once, I woke up to him petting my head, as he mused, “What is this?… the dog“
4. My mom used to refer to the show “Bosom Buddies” as “Breast Friends.”
5. I am like my dad in that I live almost entirely in my head, and sometimes I don’t realize that other people aren’t along for the mind ride from point A to point B. My favorite example of my dad doing this was the time he walked into the room where my mom and I were sitting, got all huffy, said “That’s why I’m never buying furniture again,” and walked away.
6. Sometimes at the grocery store I dance to the music over the intercom, and get mad when it is interrupted by product advertisements.
7. My college boyfriend, one of my college roommates, and my father all have the same name, although my boyfriend went by a fairly unromantic nickname. This made it somewhat challenging to figure out what to call him when we were intimate, so I had to try a bunch of variations. Subsequently, for the first several months that we were dating, he though I was sleeping with my roommate. To make matters more complicated, he also had the same name as his father, and grew up with a different nickname from the one he had in college. The first time I called him after he moved back home, I hung up the phone as soon as some one answered because I had no idea who I was asking for. I had to wait a couple of days for him to call me so I could ask.
8. When I was three years old, my parents had a party, and in the middle of it, the downstairs toilet overflowed after I used it. This caused me to be afraid of toilets until until I was twelve. For my entire childhood, my bathroom routine was go, wash hands, turn off light, open door, flush and run like hell. No wonder all the kids thought I was weird. What finally broke my fear was writing an essay about it in seventh grade, and reading it aloud to the class.
9. Back in December, Scott and I were lamenting Penn State not going to a major bowl game. We decided that the Alamo bowl isn’t so bad, and spent a few minutes sparring over who could come up with the wussiest sounding bowl game. I won with the “Hanes Her Way Panty Bowl.”
10. Back when I went to BU, I always could tell that I was at an MIT party if I was thew tallest person there.
11. This is my cat.
A lot of these really aren’t that funny. Except for thew picture of my cat. That’s sad. Oh well. May I direct you back to the title of the post?
