Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Funny or Not Funny

I've had the flu, so I don't have much of anything interesting to say. "Did you get a pain here when you had it?" I asked Mike and I pointed to my side.

"Nope," he said.

"What is that, my kidney?" I asked, pointing to my side again. 

"Nope," he said. I looked over my glasses at him as he sat next to me on the couch with his computer in his lap. "Your kidneys are in the back," he added helpfully.

We are coughing simultaneously. Isn't that romantic? Well, maybe not, but it conjures images of romantic. I can hear that he has the same sore and tickly spot at the base of his throat that I do because it's a short cough not a deep one. It's an annoying cough, but at least we share it.

What else?

I read a whole book in the past three days. The story line is a bit blurry since I sleep a lot when I get a virus and I don't remember who a couple of the characters were. It sucks because it was 'Good Omens' by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. I loved the part about 'Famine' writing the diet-guru books and how all cassette tapes - remember cassette tapes? - turn into the Best of Queen if left in your car for more than two weeks. I'm pretty sure I have the Best of Queen packed away somewhere.

I read whole paragraphs aloud to Mike from this book even though sections of it are missing from my memory because I fell asleep in the middle of a paragraph because I was sick. Mike just looked at me and shook his head as I laughed.

"That's funny, right?" I asked.

"You have a weird sense of humor," he said. Or maybe he said I was never funny. I can't remember because I had a virus and have been sleeping a lot.

But at least there are a whole bunch of other readers and at least one writer left who has my same sense of humor, I thought. I don't know why I've spent the past twenty-three years trying to convince Mike that I'm funny when he thinks I'm really not. His humor, the stuff I say when I can't believe that rude shit actually came out of my mouth, is rather different, more existential. I always make a mental chalk mark on the wall when I finally make him laugh, but I worry too. I was probably rude. I know it. After I tried to compare pains and funny stuff with Mike, it was actually quiet in the room for a bit.

And then I spent some time looking at Facebook photos of funny dogs and cats and feeling bad for Gaiman because he lost his friend Pratchett last year. That kind of friend, the one that makes you laugh, is rare and precious. So, I was thinking that Gaiman could write a book about a universe in which Pratchett is still around influencing the world in his own funny way. I was thinking that would make me feel better because now I'm stuck with a finite number of Pratchett's books to read. There has to be something cosmic in that.

I stuck my finger into the part of my side that's been hurting. "It's probably your descending colon," Mike looked up and said.

So I've got gas. It wasn't the virus but the re-imagined refried beans that Mike brought me from the Mexican restaurant for dinner. That shit looks like poop going in. I read that scientists have found a way to test your wellness through your farts. Now, why would they want to do that? I've spent forty years working not to fart in the face of my GYN when she tries to determine my level of wellness during an exam. And the gizmo that that doctor has invented to test my gas has got to have mortifying written all over it. Can you picture that device? Can you?

It just might be better than a digital mammography unit.

Image result for mammogram machine

Yet, it might be very similar. Doesn't that simulated boob like it's about to burst? Yeah, I thought so.

I pressed my finger into the pain in my side again. My wellness was about to burst into the room unannounced. Sorry Mike. Not funny. Not funny at all.

Thank you for listening, jb

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