Knock knock. Who's there? Me! I'm telling jokes again...

Stumped.  Unoriginal.  Not funny.   Stressed.   Bored.  Addicted to Facebook.  Overwhelmed with procrastinating wedding planning....

...Must.... overcome ......paralysis..... of.... writer's block.....

Write!... (I tell myself)

I have nothing to say today....

Well just say anything, you dummy!

I am pathetic....

Write the first thing that comes to your head.  Now, go!

"I am 29 years old and I have done nothing, discovered nothing, been nothing, and there are absolutely no thoughts in my head that anyone would ever want to read about."

There.  Standards lowered!

And what do you know?  Those beautiful black silhouettes of letters and words appear on the page once again!

Where does writer's block come from?  Insecurity?  Lack of inspiration?  Over-aspiration? Stinky perspiration?  Thinking things like "hey, someone thought what I wrote was funny!..maybe I should write more funny things?!"  and then the overwhelming, overbearing task of simply thinking about what else someone might think is funny seems too much to handle...

My belt fell off today at work when I sneezed.  That was pretty funny.  That's it though....

Hmm... I made up a song today about having a moldy nose that stinks?  Yea that was it also...

Well, I've been listening to John Denver a lot lately.  He's pretty funny...looking.  I even changed the words in Colorado Rocky Mountain High from "And they say that he got crazy once and he tried to touch the sun"  to "And then his mom got crazy once, and tried to touch his bum..."  
 
Ahhhh, I can't make a funny story anymore!  Why do I even blog anyway? 

Well like most all adult insecurities...the roots of their cause often stems from childhood.  Growing up in a very family-centric household, we used to have "family meetings" every Friday night. We would rotate who would get to pick the snack for the meeting (I would always choose vanilla pudding... but we would never get fancy swiss miss snack packs, we would always have the mix-it-with-milk-and-let -it-sit-in-the-fridge-powder pudding and I could never wait until it was fully set... it was more like pudding flavored sugar milk in the end).    Meeting topics would include who has what chores to do for the next week (the following 4 chores were in constant rotation: emptying the dishwasher, taking out the trash, feeding the dog, and vacuuming).  We would also discuss what we were thankful for (topics ranged from our sisters, cousins, candy, and toys to curtains, chairs, lamps and other non-interesting items we could find around the room when we were lacking inspiration).

The exciting part was the distribution of allowance. My older sisters received $3 a week while me and my little sister received $2 a week.  I do not recall ever receiving more than $2 a week, despite me being the exact same age as (and older than my older sister was) when she received $3 a week (yes, I had that fight, and yes I lost...I may still be bitter...but, hey that's what middle children are for, trying to keep you dang adults fair!  You get angel-child, Bridgey, a stuffed animal seal?  You better get me and Nancy the exact same one or we will raise hell!).

We would also go around the room and say what we wanted to be when we grew up.  I think we normally said doctors or teachers or nurses. I remember my little sister would always say she wanted to be a cash register lady.... I don't think she ever achieved that dream, poor girl.  But I remember one time I said I wanted to be a comedian.  I thought that would be a real funny thing to want to be and thought that was very creative and how very outside the box for me to come up with an occupation that my sisters hadn't thought of before.  I thought my sisters would be supportive, "wow Julie that is  exactly what you should be!!! Cause you're so funny!!"  Well it was funny alright.  My sisters' laughed their butts off to the tune of "der Julie you have to be funny to be a comedian!  No one thinks you're funny!!!!" 

And whenever  I feel unfunny this pleasant visual creeps into my brain of my pig-tailed sisters in their onsie pajamas synchronously singing "you're-not fuuunn-ny, you're-not fuuunn-ny!"

That might not have been exactly how it went down in reality, and I know my sisters think I'm pretty funny (even though they may not like to admit it), but that's my mental image every time I get writer's block and start feeling unfunny. 

Although my older sisters (and one in particular) may have been my toughest critics, I could always make my little sister laugh relatively easy.   I could burp or fart and she'd be off her rocker in no time.  I remember  oftentimes embellishing stories to get a laugh out of her.   I could never sleep at night afterward, because I also grew up as a Catholic.  And I knew all the stories I was telling her weren't completely true and the fear of going to hell for telling lies was always a very strong and a very real concern in my childhood world.

But if we were ever going to hell for one incident, it was the time we saw the man with the major wedgie in church.   As kids in church we often had a hard time sitting still.  We might giggle to ourselves and get a scolding from my mom or one of my older sisters who would give us the stink eye or an elbow in the side to get us to shut up.  But then it happened.  It was time to stand up for prayer.  And the slightly overweight, middle aged man in front of us was wearing sweatpants.   When he stood up he had the biggest wedgie either of us had ever laid eyes on.  I caught one glimpse of it and immediately turned to my sister and gave her a wide eyed nod toward the direction of his butt crack.  We both just lost it.   Shaking so hard we were nearly convulsing, snot nearly busting out our noses, snorting, gurgling, suffocating for christ's sake, we needed help!!!  We got a furious stink eye from our mother.  We would close our eyes and pray the other would stop giggling and shaking.  Even 10-15 minutes later after we had calmed down, one of us would pick up the mental image of that man's pants and start blubbering and contorting and it would send us both back over the edge again.   This went on for the entire ceremony (and still goes on to this day every time we think of wedgie man).  There were no donuts for us after that mass.   


Wikipedia "wedgie" entry:

A wedgie occurs when a person's underwear or other garments are wedged between the buttocks. While a wedgie can be created naturally, the term is usually associated with a prank or as a form of bullying. When a person is on the receiving end of a wedgie, his or her underwear is forcibly pulled up by a second person.

I leave you with the following bad lip reading video: