September 12, 2011

I need help finding my sense of humor. I lost it somewhere over the years, across an ocean or a state line.  Maybe I left it in the bottom of a bottle or an ashtray, or on top of someone else’s pillow.

I am retracing my steps, trying to remember where I had it last.  (You know how absentminded I am.) I don’t recall the last time I saw it, precisely.  It was about five years ago.  I could laugh at anything. The funny side was the right side of things.  If you knew me back then, you were lucky.  I had a great sense of humor.

I guess it’s time to do some house cleaning.  I imagine my mind to be disorganized and crowded, as the home of a hoarder.  “I can’t throw it away! I might use it someday,” I wail, clutching a scrap of notebook paper, which turns out to be a page of notes I took in high school Physics.

The floor is littered with newspapers, letters, greeting cards, hate mail, old stuffed animals, doodles, artwork, presents, holiday decorations — not to mention all the figments of my imagination living in this mess: fictional characters like Bilbo Baggins and Luke Skywalker; about ten different versions of myself, some semblance of God, intelligent life from different dimensions/planets; and my characterization of my role models –  Didion, Bukowski, Steinbeck, King, Salinger…. so many faces behind so many doors.  My mind is quite the party.

Once I get some of this clutter organized, they might even help me find my sense of humor again.  We will stand together to fight any evil that lurks in the dusty corners of my thoughts.  An evil that has spent decades waiting for me in the closet of my childhood bedroom, chumming it up with my old Alf doll, and holding my sense of humor hostage.

Aha, that must be where my sense of humor is.