Laugh Track

Most peo­ple have taken a par­tic­u­lar career track, fam­ily track, or edu­ca­tional track.

Me?

I have spent my life on the laugh track. For fifty-eight years I have been able to find humor in every­day life — no mat­ter how grim. It is a gift that came from some genes that did not have any­thing bet­ter to do. As a child I was very sickly. Iron­i­cally, I have buried peo­ple in bet­ter health that were a lot younger. I do not know what to make of this, but appar­ently it is tak­ing Deity longer to per­fect me than those that went before. At the rate I am going, I feel pretty sure that I will live to be three-hundred years old. I am still pulling pranks I pulled in the eighth grade. Totally grow­ing up has never appealed to me anyway.

After a very hor­ri­ble surgery at age eigh­teen, I pre­tended I was dead a cou­ple of days after the surgery. The after­noon nurse finally found humor in my stunt (I had pulled the sheet up over my head and stayed very still). For­give me if I was taunt­ing death itself at the moment, but it holds con­sis­tent with a secret that I think God has been keep­ing from most of human­ity: that any­thing truly funny can be for­given no mat­ter how outrageous.

In life I have not sought con­sis­tency but para­dox and con­tra­dic­tion. I am the kid that peeks behind the stage cur­tain. At a movie the­ater, I watch the peo­ple about as much as I watch the movie. That dou­bles the enter­tain­ment value of the event. Thank heav­ens there are so many peo­ple on this planet; all are capa­ble of pre­sent­ing hilar­ity in one form or another. The fun­ni­est ones are the ones that take them­selves too seri­ously (again — para­dox and con­tra­dic­tion). As a min­is­ter I would rather do church than attend one…which puts me in church every Sun­day (and all week long). Once again, para­dox and contradiction.

Go fig­ure.