By fifth grade, my humor was tall for its age. It was goofy and awkward and made my friends laugh. My two best friends, both nerdy, called me Professor Car-Car.

 

In sixth grade, almost everyone else’s humor started filling out and looking more grown up. Mine stayed skinny, scrawny, and flat chested. By year’s end, it was shorter than most.

 

In high school, I was ashamed of my humor. Everyone knew it had stopped growing in the fifth grade, loved dumb jokes, laughed hysterically at slapstick, and snorted through its nose at jokes about gas. Most people my age preferred jokes about sex, but my humor and I secretly preferred Knock-Knock jokes and puns.

 

There’s no cure for fifth-grade humor; it never grows up. I’ve tried literary supplements but I end up making fun of them. After hours of imbibing ironic artsy films full of sardonic laughter, I create parodies in my mind to mock them. These often involve banana peels.

 

Contrary to what you might think, I have tried to train my humor to sit quietly through meetings and not make up funny stories in my head about the people talking. However, my humor can only sit still so long. Fifth-graders have a lot of energy and can’t be stuck in a chair all day.

 

Yesterday I wrote about my husband’s colonoscopy and titled the post Let’s get this party started. In an act of heroic restraint, I did not use my first choice: Let’s get this party farted. I should get some credit for that.

 

Also, I refrained from writing an entire post about Doctor Payne and his daring space probe. He lands on Uranus in search of his nemesis, Paul Upps, a parasitic creature who attaches himself to other living beings and sucks the life out of them. Doctor Payne heard that Paul Upps was hiding out in a dark tunnel deep in the heart of Uranus. In the end, Doctor Payne finds Paul Upps and removes him. However, that’s just the pilot story. Paul Upps is not so easily destroyed. He takes on other forms and shows up other places, so Doctor Payne can have a satisfying career seemingly killing off Paul Upps each week, only to find the evil creature has re-emerged somewhere else next week. I haven’t decided yet who should play Doctor Payne, but I’m open to suggestions.

 

I’ve given my humor free rein in my brain, where it has room to run around in all that empty space. The letter “g” has corrupted free rein, so now we are seeing people given free reign. Free rein means my humor is sitting on the buckboard of my mind letting the horses run wild. Free reign means the little potentate is sitting a throne, dictating what I say. So untrue. I keep my humor in check, and I think it’s important that you know that I’m doing my best to keep it from racing around the interblogs, kicking up dust and  making a nuisance of itself.

 

You’re welcome.