Quick! Hide Your Nuts!

NAVIGATING LIFE THROUGH HUMOR

When The Humor is Ready, The Mentor Will Come

I joined Medium in 2019 but I wasn’t particularly prolific. From October 2019 to June 2020, I wrote three stories. They sucked. During that time, I mostly wrote on my bed in partly used notebooks I’d accumulated at the Goodwill. I wasn’t online so much as under the covers scribbling.

I’d still be writing in donated notebooks today, but I quit the Goodwill and I refuse to buy new paper. My motto is if you throw it out, I’ll buy it. Nobody pays for your random thoughts unless you’re famous, a scandalous politician, or Anne Lamott. Paper kills trees and trees house squirrels and writers are nuts. See what I mean?

Like any hero at a fork in the road, I faced two divergent paths. The road to the mental hospital or the road to Medium. I drove up to the mental hospital but they said I didn’t pass the litmus test which was if you think you’re crazy, you’re not crazy.

I think that’s a dumb test. Do they say that to people who think they’re stupid? If you think you’re stupid, you’re not stupid. That can’t be right. Since the cuckoo’s nest wouldn’t have me, I started working on my 4th Medium story in two years.

I wrote it and I waited. Godot had nothing on me. I submitted nowhere. Like many of you, I assumed as soon as my hands touched the magical keyboard, the Medium world would be alerted to my presence and the applause would follow. And that’s exactly what happened. Two years later.

While I waited to be discovered, I found The Bad Influence. When I first attempted to be funny on paper, Reuben Salsa from The Bad Influence read one of my pieces and said it was a little mean. He was 100% on point and very gentle with me.

I could be embarrassed that I ever sent out a piece like that, but everyone does — at first. You gotta be bad before you be good. My old music teacher used to say You gotta sing ugly to sing pretty.

Look at singers when they’re belting out their songs. They’re not pulling a Kardashian, frozen jawed, trying not to move any facial muscles. Their mouth is wide open. They could eat a small dog. Some could eat a bread box. Their mouth is like a cervix…

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