smartgrrrl's guide to stuff

I’ve been waiting to write up this post until I could devote more time to it. In the meantime I’ve been telling everyone this story. Let’s call those versions “first drafts.”

Several weeks ago I decided to attend a free hour-long humor writing workshop. No reason why I chose humor other than its time fit my schedule — I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly funny person, as I rambled on about at length at the time.

I had no idea what to expect, either, in terms of attendance or content. I got to the Barnes & Noble where the workshop was being held on the early side, and had to wait for the Lucie Arnaz signing to finish. (Yes, really.) It was impossible to gauge who was there for the signing and who was there for the class — I don’t know what that means, if anything, but my fears that I would be the oldest person in the room were immediately vanquished, so that’s something.

I eventually found myself, not really by choice, sitting right in the middle of the front row, with an empty chair on either side of me. Just as the instructor started the introduction to the workshop and to the Gotham Writers’ Workshops in general, an elderly lady slowly walked up to the chair to my left, and as she was slowly sitting down next to me asked, of no one in particular, “What is this? Why are you all here? What is this here?” until the instructor broke off and asked if the woman was here for the humor writing workshop.

“The what?”

The instructor repeated herself.

“The what?”

“The humor writing workshop,” the instructor said again, a bit louder.

“Oh,” said the older woman, as though disappointed that it wasn’t another book signing. “I don’t know, I’ll give it a try, but I don’t think I’m very funny.”

Two things: 1) when I say “elderly,” I mean “elderly.” There are members of my extended family who are well into their 70s and you’d never know it — they’re in better shape than I am. They’re not “elderly” to me. But this woman moved slowly, with a cane, was stooped from osteoporosis (I’m guessing), and she was hard of hearing. As will we all when we reach that age (I’m looking forward to that cane, myself. I plan to make it purple and glittery with ribbons coming out the top like the ones from the handlebars of my first bike). This was the sort of woman that if you didn’t get up to give her your seat on the subway, I would glare at you disapprovingly and then give up my own seat because you were too much of a lazy-ass bastard to do what was right.

2) Our instructor was Kimberlee Auerbach, who was wonderful and funny and patient and used examples from her memoir, The Devil, The Lovers & Me, to illustrate basic humor writing techniques.

So the buffer I had from other workshop attendees was down on one side, and in its place was a woman who, despite being right in the front row, mere feet away from Kimberlee’s podium, heard only every other sentence, and then not always accurately. I hope this doesn’t sound mean. I don’t like being mean, and I certainly couldn’t be mean to this woman — not after she said, “Well, I don’t think I’m very funny, but why not?” because that was exactly where I was coming from. At the same time, she would repeatedly ask, “What did you say?” or “What did she say?” the latter addressing either me or the man to her left, and as much as it killed me to do so, I had to ignore her. I knew that if I answered her once, I’d have to answer her every other time, and it would mean I’d miss things from the workshop, and it would also be rude. I mean, we were sitting in the front row, right in front of Kimberlee. So as much as it pained me, I kept my eyes and ears fixed front.

Kimberlee started describing the chapters of her memoir. One was about the time she ran for vice president of the student council with the slogan “Don’t Dance Around the Issues. Vote Kim for Vice President. She Bops,” not knowing what “she bops” means. This would be one of the times the woman to my left asked “What did she say?” and I ignored her for yet another I assume obvious reason.

Then Kimberlee described another chapter, concerning the one and only time she’d ever had a one-night stand. She was trying on a different persona — maybe she was the kind of girl who could cut loose and go crazy every once in a while — but, as she said, “Instead I got crabs.”

The class laughed appreciatively.

The woman turned to me and asked, in that slightly too loud way that hard-of-hearing people can have, “WHAT DOES THAT MEAN, ‘SHE GOT CRABBED’?”

I lost all composure immediately. I knew at the back of my mind that this would be the highlight of the hour for me, and I desperately wanted to laugh, but instead I started stammering and floundering around for something to tell her that wasn’t “IT MEANS SHE HAD PUBIC LICE.”* The people around me were no help at all, laughing at both of us. Ultimately I gave up and gave the woman a helpless shrug that I hope she took in the sympathetic spirit it was intended.

When it was time to start writing we were instructed to choose an event that felt tragic at the time and try to make it funny. “THIS,” I thought. “I need to write about WHAT JUST HAPPENED.”

But I second-guessed myself and wound up writing something a little too familiar to me, which then backfired by not being even remotely funny, in either draft, and also entirely too long. Next workshop I take should be on brevity.

Yeah. I know.

* Credit for that line goes to Stephanie.

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