Humor And Guilt

By Author: Donald Ladew
Total Articles: 5
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An article where we discuss the relationship of humor, seriousness and guilt.
In one of the numerous and astonishingly tedious lectures I received as a boy, my father said, stop making jokes, son, life is very serious, and he meant it. Well, he wasn't wrong but then I had trouble taking him seriously. I tend to forget even now that he went through the depression and was raised a Victorian. Those events were apparently enough to suck the laughter out of the most cheerful of men. I'll tell you the genesis of this little essay. I am supposed to be writing a serious tome about the Lemon law for the public market. Instead I have written several entries to the Bulwer Lytton Contest. This is a contest where the writer must create the worst possible opening paragraph for a novel. As I was writing I was feeling guilty and laughing at the same time. Here is my entry; it won't win; there are worsesigh. Franny Portly slithered down Elm (of the species Ulmus) Street as sleek as a Python after dining on goat, yet certainly there was an element of awkward, gawky, stumbling child to her winsome gait, as winsome as one can be ...
... when one has hips like a Peterbilt and wears a 46 D cup, I noticed this from the two corners of my steel hard eyes as I crept from my Lamborghini Muira 6.5 Litre 8 cylinder bordello red roadster. I muttered chattily to myself, a Chevie Caprice would have been more sensible. Catchy, huh? Unquestionably a Best Seller I will get back to serious writing any moment as it is a fine assignment and the client is great. This business of being serious and lighthearted didn't end there as you might guess. I can't remember the number of times I have come to work at various jobs only to be met by Mister or Missus Sour. They ask, What are you smiling about? It isn't even nine o'clock? An echo of, Life is very serious, can be heard faintly. Or, I have heard that people who smile all the time aren't very bright. If this is true, I probably have an IQ of 12 and shouldn't be allowed to tie my shoes without help. The New England work ethic at war with laughter. It's a terrible dichotomy: The awful disease of laughter. Squadrons of misanthropes have been looking for the cure for centuries without success. Humor is a mental health thing; far better than drugs or electric shock, which proves conclusively that mental health professionals don't have much in the way of a sense of humor. I have been waiting for those fellas to name humor as a syndrome, assign all manner of mind destroying behaviors to it, thus allowing them to treat (read that as drug or shock insensible) those suffering from this heinous malady. I am convinced that I would have been dead years ago if I didn't still find things that make me laugh aloud. Okay, I am getting more focused now. It was a grim, terrifying, soft rainy evening lit by the occasional shaft of sunlight searing the forest floor like a nuclear furnace, but not sufficiently to cause any permanent damage, although damage to one might be an ecological imperative to another: who knows? Jaanne Eyre, who did not think of herself as a damsel in distress, screamed with inappropriate dread... All right, I think I have it out of my system for the moment. "No more guilt, please," he said for no good reason whatsoever. About the Author Mr. Ladew has traveled and worked all over the world. He spent many years as an aerospace engineer. He works as a technical writer and trainer. Mr. Ladew is also a novelist (2 books published), writes articles, essays, short stories and Haiku. he has also written a best selling business book for mid-level supervisors.