Day 53: No Moe Larry or Curly

Husband sometimes gently suggests that Mirth is not as mirthful as it might be.

When this happens, I go through my library of Pointed Looks and select an especially suitable one to spear him with. I suggest that marriage has not proved as mirthful as it might be, either. There are days when it’s all sunshine and laughter, and there are days when you wonder how much gas is in the car and how far away you can get before the debit card runs dry.

I figure I’d only make it to Nebraska and then have to start a new life in a seedy motel off I-80 in the middle of nowhere. While Anne Tyler makes this sort of story work, I’m not a character in one of her novels.

Or am I? It might be fun to abnegate all personal responsibility and wait around for one’s author to fix everything with the stroke of her almighty pen. It’d be like finding Jesus, with a better plot line and no tithing or shaming or penance.

Husband has a valid point, which is why it sticks in my craw: You call yourself Mirth and then fail to deliver the goods? You promise pies in the face and then throw the weight of the world in them?

I hate to waste whipped cream on a cheap laugh. It’s a mean and sniggering laugh, too. A pie in the face is meant to humiliate.

So too with banana peels. You toss one out — Har Har Har! — and somebody breaks a hip.

It’ll be me lying there, having a Come-to-Jesus moment. I’ll contemplate all the calcium-rich foods I didn’t eat and all the weight-bearing exercise I didn’t get and the awkward fact that I’m not wearing clean underwear, despite what mother taught me.

Now THAT’S funny!