And They Said It Wouldn’t Last…
by Karen Williams - Seminole Chronicle - May 2006
At this one-year anniversary of my humor column in the Seminole Chronicle, humorists the world-over are shaking in their boots. They know I’m here to stay.
Dave Barry is holed up in Miami, guzzling Maalox and fearing his days as King are numbered.
Andy Rooney senses that he’ll lose his audience if he doesn’t get funnier and/or trim those eyebrows.
Mary Roach (who could do with a name-change and who writes humor for Reader’s Digest) is nervously reading my columns and sticking pins in a voodoo doll. (Ouch, there goes one into my bo-hahn-kus.)
Well, perhaps I border on delusions of grandeur, but I’m having fun with “Funny Side Up,” and I’ve received thought-provoking feedback from family and friends.
Son Smitty, a math grad student at University of Florida, actually loved a column I wrote about his UF graduation ceremony, and he posted it on a university website.
But Smitty warned me about a column wherein I complained about people’s bad grammar: “Mom, you’re rendering yourself a bulls eye for every true grammarian who reads that.” (Bingo.)
Smitty also chided me for writing a column about my “Magic Washer,” for he thought it foolhardy to reveal weird habits I adopted when we lived in Ashland, Oregon.
“Don’t talk weird to me,” I shot back. “You live in Gainesville! Hugged any trees lately?”
Son Joel in Miami advised me to cut back on the cutesy family anecdotes. “You need to write columns with more universal appeal and redeeming value,” he instructed. His favorite so far was my basketball column.
Daughter Emily, 16, has appeared in columns about teenage driving, ballet lessons, and getting an iPod. “I don’t care if you write about me,” she said recently, “but stop portraying me as a spoiled brat. I’m nothing like that.”
A stomped foot and a magazine flung across the room emphasized her point.
Actually, all three kids and my feller, Mark, have been good-natured when finding themselves in my columns. Mark, ever in a love-is-blind mode, adores my work, considering me the next Shakespeare. Heaven help anyone who dares say my tales are “told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
A surprise response came from a friend who, after reading “Eureka, there’s gold in them-thar e-mails!” about email scams, thought I had indeed landed a windfall. She confessed she was intensely jealous. Marveling that my parody had been misunderstood, I decided to play along – that is, until she started hinting about a loan.
Some friends ask nervously if I intend to write about them someday. I always say no, trying to preserve some shreds of a social life.
I’ve been asked if the material I write is true. I’ll admit to some embellishment and hyperbole (whatever the heck that is), but yes, overall, it’s true. I gorge on Baker’s chocolate, I used to carry my sick dog on “walks” around the neighborhood, I was once afraid to drive any farther than my garage, I can’t figure out how to paint a wall without getting paint all over everything but the wall, and I tend to organize my life around watching “Jeopardy” on TV.
All of this reveals my bizarre existence. Actually, it’s more mundane than bizarre, but I’ve come to view myself in a bizarre, zany way. Perhaps I’ve taken the mundane and made it fundane.
Dave Barry, be afraid. Be very, very afraid.
Copyright 2006, Karen Williams
