"I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. 

I only claim to know how a story ought to be told, for I have been 
almost daily in the company of the most expert storytellers for many years. 



There are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind--
the humorous. I will talk mainly about that one. The humorous story 
is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. 
The humorous story depends for its effect upon the MANNER of the telling; 
the comic story and the witty story upon the MATTER." 

Mark Twain (From his essay “How to Write a Story”)

Humorous, Comic, Witty

Storytelling is just this side of lying--the north side. Humorous storytelling is just this side of lying added to hyperbole mixed with enough wit to make reality look funnier than it actually is.

According to Mr. Twain, any little old thing that happens during the day can become a humorous story if told with the correct amount of art and skill. I agree. I find that there isn't much in this world that isn't funny, especially now, what with the roving gangs of I-Want-Something-I-Don’t-Have-But-I’m-Pretty-Sure-That-You-Might-Have-It, So-I’m-Going-To-Fling-Poo-At-You folks. I know I’m laughing when I practice my anti-gang tactics and poo dodging drills.

I enjoy humor that involves irony, wit, satire, and the clever use of the word indubitably. My husband, father-in-law, and grandson find the three stooges wildly funny. Thus illustrating the ethereal nature of what qualifies as humorous. Some folks laugh at the sound of a fart produced by an armpit. Some folks laugh at the subtle and not so subtle manipulation used in the advertisements of politicians that have spent sixteen trillion dollars and don’t even have a lousy T-shirt to show for it. Oops.

But here we are to tell about it, humorously if possible. It shouldn’t be too hard. After all, we are in the presence of expert storytellers every time we turn on the six o’clock news.

Bureaucracy or Bust

Recently, we developed a bit of a cat problem. We went from no cats to ten cats. It wasn’t on purpose.

My theory is that animal lovers think they want animals and then they actually get one or two or ten, and it’s trickier than it looks on TV—what with the fleas, and the claws, and the rabies and all. Too tender hearted to take their unwanted pets to the pound, they bring them to the nice country lady’s house and dump them. They have to pass Osceola Animal Control to do it, and before you can say, “Hello kitty,” there are feral cats living in the chimney and the chicken coop—possibly the dryer vent.

Then we have to trap them with hotdogs on strings and take them to the pound. It sucks. I’d like to figure out who the cat dumpers are and leave my horse on their front lawn.

My husband got stuck having to take a litter of five identical black kittens into the special bureaucracy invented for the control of other people’s cats.

“Please tell me,” the nice bureaucratic lady began, “that you weren’t scratched by any of these darling, perfectly healthy kittens. We can adopt them out right away, unless of course, you were scratched or bitten.” She may have winked.

My husband, honest and good and brave, told the truth, of course.

“Yes! I got scratched. See?” he displayed a four-inch scratch on his left wrist.

“Which one scratched you?”

“The black one.” Sherwood can be a real joker sometimes.

She groaned. “Oh no, then we have to quarantine them all for ten days.” A bright, shiny light glittered in her bureaucratic eye. “Let’s do this. Let’s say that the one that scratched you got away. Now then, did any of these cats scratch or bite you?”

“Yes,” Sherwood said. “See?” He showed her his wrist again.

“No. No. No. Okay, one more time. Did any of these perfectly healthy cats, the ones that didn’t run away, unlike the one that scratched you, did any of these cats scratch or bite you.”

She winked again broadly, hopefully.

This wink did it. He caught on.

“No, I put gloves on after the,” he said, squashing one eye closed back to her, “black one that scratched me ran away.”

She made him fill out a paper about the fabricated, escaped black cat. The health department sent my husband a letter encouraging him to speak with his doctor about the possibility that he might now have rabies. But Sherwood knew that it was really fictional rabies from an invisible black cat, so we aren’t too worried.

Except to say, that this new fangled desire for more governmental rules, regulations, bureaucracies, and departments is danged confusing. I’m not sure that we’re slick enough to take proper advantage of the system or the story telling involved.   

Linda (Scat) Zern

SEEING SPOTS

"Hey! I just noticed how freckly you are,” my husband said. He sounded shocked.

We’ve been married for thirty-four years.

I looked at him, stunned.

“Who have you been living with for more than three decades?”

I’m so freckly that I could be a one of those models in the clothing ads where they feature a super freckly human as if to say, “See how beautiful even the genetic weirdos are?”

Or as my six-year old grandson said, “YaYa you have a lot of spots.”

“It’s camouflage for when I hide in the tall grass,” I said. “In a trillion, million years everyone will have spots like me.”

“And you’re really hairy.”

“Go away,” I told him.

As a writer, I find the contrast between my fifty-year old husband’s observational skills and my six-year old grandson’s abilities, fascinating. What’s the point of having eyes if you don’t use them? Thirty years living with the first guy and he never noticed I was half Irish and half cheetah? If my husband is evolving, it’s to become an eyeless lemur with huge hands. I don’t want to talk about why he’ll have huge hands.

Learning to see with better eyes is a skill that I’m not sure can be taught anymore, especially now that the angry birds are distracting the lemur people, but Conner gives me hope. His eyes work just fine.

It’s his mouth that gives him trouble.

So when I’m watching for hair and spots and trying to find fresh ways to depict the hairy spot people as clearly and as crisply as I’d like to be able to describe a wart on a backside, I keep my mouth shut. And I do my best to say it with my keyboard. I’m trying to learn to see with better eyes. I figure, if I work at it really hard I might get as good at it as a six-year old.

“YaYa, why do you have a black booby bra?”

“Because it makes me invisible to zombies.”

Conner nodded and like a heat seeking missile went in search of his next fascinating, albeit embarrassing discovery.

Linda (Four Eyes) Zern