writing
funny (just add kids)
by tori gallagher
I
am not funny. I have never been funny. I tell jokes badly, am always
slow with a comeback and can never remember an appropriate anecdote
for the situation. If I am popular at parties, it is because I listen
well and am adept at finding someone who wants to be listened to so
that I can maintain the illusion of mingling. In the past few years
though, I discovered that sometimes I can write funny. I don’t
know how this happened. Perhaps it is because I have listened to so
many stories that I am finally learning to tell them. Or maybe it’s
because writing is a whole other ball game.
I
discovered something since I acquired children. I discovered that raising
children and running a household is sometimes fun and gratifying, sometimes
lonely and mind-numbingly boring, and often exasperating. And if I write
about that—what exasperates me most —it comes out funny,
and I stop being quite so put out with our children which is good, because
if they weren’t so funny and cute we would probably have eaten
them by now. So now that I have acquired a family, I find myself surrounded
by funny people. The children by virtue of being exactly what they are—little
aliens new to the world and largely still unjaded and untrained—are
never-ending founts of material (for writing, not my therapist). That
too, though. (Okay, I don’t really have a therapist. Not yet.)
My
partner is also funny. She has one of the sharpest wits I’ve ever
come across and a genetic inclination to use it as often as possible.
(I’ve met her family. I know.) That little switch that most of
us have somewhere in our brains that tells us that perhaps, this is
not the time to say that, no matter how funny it may be, doesn’t
work (or exist) in her brain. If she thinks it and it’s funny,
it comes out of her mouth. And we all usually giggle or pretend not
to while we feign shock that she said such a thing—these are not
x-rated things, mind you, just TRUE ones. And most of us are trained
early not to say TRUE things. That’s where tact comes in. It tells
you when not to tell the truth. But it does not tell her. She says the
thing anyway and, let’s face it—it’s funny. Because
funny lacks tact. It lets its hair down and speaks the truth in a deadpan
voice, unabashedly. It says what we all want to say but are afraid to
for fear of hurting some one’s feelings or being thought the less
of. Funny is freedom. It’s a pressure relief valve—for me
when I write it.
And
that is the best way I know to survive parenthood and stay sane when
the boys are chasing each other up and down the hallway shouting because
there’s three inches of snow on the ground outside so I can’t
throw them out there too long or they will roll and revel in it until
their wet clothes begin to freeze to their skin and I have to be the
bad guy and make them come in and thaw out which they will do by running
up and down the hallway shouting while the dogs chase them and the cat
flees and I dodge them all carrying the laundry basket until I finally
lose it and tell them my head is going to explode if they don’t
quiet down. And they think that is funny. So they laugh. Loudly. And
then they run around some more in delight. But I don’t think it’s
funny—my head exploding. It just sounds messy really and messy
means there will be something else for me to clean up soon.
Ogden
Nash once said “Parents were invented to make children happy by
giving them something to ignore.” And this is true. Not all the
time. Sometimes our children want me—when they are hungry, hurt
or must find a lost toy right now, they want me. Beyond that I might
as well be a piece of furniture like a couch or an ottoman. But I am
an ottoman that occasionally insists that they do their homework or
take baths or go to bed, so they generally like the ottoman better.
It’s easier to climb on. (I tend to protest loudly when they climb
on me now that they are getting bigger. The ottoman doesn’t protest
at all. It just breaks. And then I have to fix it.)
A
friend of mine asked me the other day if I ever write about anything
other than being a parent and a homemaker. I said yes, I write about
putting up Christmas trees and trips to Walmart and flying on airplanes.
But then I thought, that’s all about the children too. I put up
the Christmas tree for the kids. When I was young, single and childless
I did it once but my cat knocked it down three times and I didn’t
bother with it the years after that. Now the cat, the dogs and the boys
take turns knocking it down and still each year we untangle lights and
unpack ornaments and vacuum up needles to put up the tree because it’s
all a part of making a holiday for them. And I would probably never
travel to Walmart if they didn’t have the cheapest almost-everything-you-might-need
for little boys.
So
yes, I guess I do always write about being a parent. Except for riding
the airplane. I did that because I am a daughter. But still you could
rationalize that I rode the airplane because my parents needed me so
as to model appropriate filial behavior for our children when they are
grown. When I am older and you are grown up and my house gets washed
away in a hurricane, you get on a plane and come see me, like I am doing,
see? Even if the plane looks older than me and shakes and rattles like
my washing machine and doesn’t look like it’s terribly happy
about being several thousand feet above the ground with a bunch of soft,
fleshy things in its belly that probably will not bounce if the plane
suddenly falls out of the sky.
They
say you should write what you know. Well I still don’t know how
much I know about parenting and writing isn’t about should to
me. It’s more about must. When I don’t, all those words
and stories jangle around in my head making a terrible ruckus until
it becomes difficult to sleep or to do my 6000th load of laundry or
sink full of dishes because housework just isn’t all that gratifying
and somehow a story on paper is, especially if it makes people laugh.
Because humor is a common language after all. It tramples boundaries,
erases differences and takes the sting out of the cut. And I can only
do it when I write. So I do. As often as the words in my head need to
spill out.
Tori
Gallagher
lives with her partner and their three sons in West Asheville where
she spends much of her time exploring and writing about the trials
of a modern family in a post-modern world (or just wondering how the
comic slice of the American pie ended up on her plate). She aspires
one day to remember a punch line at a party.