Unfunny

I desperately want to be funny. Like make people spray milk outta their nose funny, like that one time in fifth grade when Kevin decided to start calling my (really skinny) friend Laurie "Lard" instead, and she got so enraged she upended a picnic table and launched a barrage of cold, half-congealed pizza at anyone even remotely connected to the scene. She was glorious, mighty in her outrage, long brownish-blond hair whipping dramatically in the wind, skirt riding up a little too high as she struck down her tormentors like an avenging angel sponsored by Pizza Hut, all while spewing out every obscenity she knew in powerful tones. This is funnier if you know that I went to a tiny, super-conservative Christian school.

To return to my point, I really, really want to be funny.

This is not a new development. I was the unfortunate kid in school that, once it became clear that I wasn't going to be the "pretty" one (due to a powerful convergence of genetics and a sugar addiction, I was chubby, bespectacled, and had some impressive orthodontia), I swept past the "smart" one (not cool enough) and set my sights on the "funny" one.

My early attempts at humor were cringe inducing. I drew (terrible) cartoons lampooning school policy, and then was too afraid to show anyone because I might've gotten in trouble. I practiced jokes in the mirror and forgot punchlines around my friends. I tried the usual preteen snarky sarcasm, but my mom made me do extra chores whenever she caught me sharpening my skills on my brothers.

I was trying so hard. Desperation sat on me like an oil slick. And the other kids at school could sense it. The pack turned on me and I was cut out. I was the "weird" one. It affected me in dark ways.

First off, I decided that I was completely misunderstood and unloved. To reflect this fact and ensure its veracity, I developed the most rotten, anti-social attitude ever seen in my small town. Next, I decided I was a rebel and bought a huge trench coat to wear everywhere. Even in summer. In Texas. Where it can be 100+ degrees for many, many days in a row. I'm not sure why I thought the coat would make my nonconformist position clear - I'm pretty sure people just thought I was mentally handicapped and needed the coat to feel secure in my poor addled brain. The grace note was a black newsboy hat that I covered in buttons featuring clever sayings like "meh" and super-rebellious pictures of Invader Zim.

I thought I was so dark and brooding. I pictured myself as a tortured artist, trapped in an early ennui contracted through a bourgeois small town existence. I wrote terrible poetry that I illustrated with heavy charcoal sketches (I would show, but I burned them all in a fit of retroactive shame shortly before getting married - I am sure my husband would have had second thoughts if he'd seen the fruits of my dark labors). I also sighed deeply a lot and perfected my sneer.

God bless my parents for not murdering me. When, years later, I asked my dad if they'd been worried or anything about me, he told me no, not really. He said he knew that I wouldn't have done anything really stupid out of my inordinate fear of getting caught, I liked myself too much to ever hurt myself intentionally, and that he and my mom thought it was best to get any rebellion out of my system while I still lived at home and where they could keep a close eye on me.

Plus, he said, grinning evilly, that was the funniest you've ever been.