From the WOW Writing Class on Humor
From C. Aiaria Lucas:
Doris
Before she even arrived, her perfume let everyone know she was in line. The pungent Avon eau de toilette wafting into the noses of the three people in front of her. She was talking loudly, seemingly to herself. Nearly yelling, “I know, I know… he really did, I swear!” Doris was laughing so hard she was wheezing.
The middle-ages woman just in front of Doris turns to look. Frowning at this garish white-haired woman in a brightly colored flowered top with pink polyester pants. Then eyes back to the cashier, both nodding in disapproval, at clothing or behavior, it was hard to tell which.
Her call now complete, Doris stood in line waiting for her turn patiently. “Can’t the cashier work any faster,” she mumbled loud enough for the Earl in produce to hear her. The cashier sighed. Doris, now far too bored to stand-still, began thinking about earlier, when she was at the funeral of her brother Frank’s eldest niece’s, husband’s, cousin’s funeral.
It has been her turn up to the casket, where she intended to say a small prayer in honor of Dominic, whom she hardly knew. But she was sure that God needed to hear from her, if he was to make it to heaven, so, hands to chest, she began to pray. Right in the middle, she spied out of the corner of her eye, something moving inside the casket, next to Dominic’s right hand.
She peeked in further to see what it was. Further still, until her whole head was inside. As usual she was unawares and didn’t notice she’d drawn the attention of the other funeral attendees. They gasped in horror as Doris tumbled headfirst into the casket. Her shoes fell. One. Two. Onto the floor as her brother Frank rushed to her side, pulling her out by her flailing, stocking-ed feet.
When she was steady, both feet on the wooden floor of the funeral home, she held her prize up in the air… a small pond turtle. It retracted its head back into the safety of its dark spotted shell. Doris knew that despite the obscene responses from the other attendees, that today, she had saved a life.
Doris runs out of the funeral home, holding the turtle, only to be followed by the minister, a woman she didn’t recognize, Frank, her other sister Elsie and niece Ava. She already loved the turtle and wondered to herself how it even got inside the casket in the first place.
The woman yells after her, “What are you doing?!”
Doris yells back, “Saving the turtle!”
“It doesn’t belong to you!” the woman calls out.
“Why are you so upset over a turtle?” Doris asks, loud as ever.
“Give me the turtle! Give me the turtle!”
Doris tries to leave, but the minister, this woman, even her sister Elsie try to pull the turtle from her grasp. There’s a real life, tug of war going on. Back and forth, back and forth, until finally, the turtle slips from Doris’ hands and flies up into the air.
She stares towards the glaring sun, eyes all squinty, trying to find the turtle but she can’t seem to locate it. Everyone else is staring up too. Mumbling, asking, wondering aloud, “What happened to the turtle?”
Doris puts her hand up to shield her eyes, scanning the sky. Suddenly realizing that it must have fallen down by now. It would’ve been impossible not to. So, she runs around the car covered parking lot in search of the missing, possible injured turtle.
“Stop her!” yells the unknown woman. “Don’t let her get that turtle!”
Now most of the funeral attendees are outside watching the spectacle before them. Doris running around cars to find the turtle, the woman, the minister, her sister, her niece, even Frank, now chasing her, trying to stop her. They call out, “Doris! Doris! Doris!”
She weaves this way and that, outsmarting them all. Dipping in and out of empty parking spots, jumping over cars, rolling across the pavement. The hot sun was slowing everyone else down, but not Doris. She kept right on going, like the Energizer bunny. She went on searching and searching for the turtle.
But then they finally cornered her. Outpaced by a thin, young man with suspendered trousers. His hands out to his sides, body low to the ground, like he’s trying to cage a wild animal. That’s when she sees it, out of the corner of her eye, the dark shell of the pond turtle. She grabs it quickly, rolls under a car and away from suspenders, and toward the back of the lot to her car. Moments later, speeding down the car park, nearly running over poor old lady Harkins.
From Dulcie Witman:
Most Fitting
I could not stop myself from going - not with bribery (I’ll take you out for ice cream if you’ll just lay off), not with threats (you’ll be refused admittance—they do not want his mistress at his funeral), not even with good old fashioned shame (how could you, what will his kids say) so once I realized the inevitability of my attendance, well there was nothing left to do but pick out an outfit.
And the clown suit is what seemed most fitting.
Enough of a disguise that I wouldn’t get fingered but eye catching enough to make a splash. And who wouldn’t want a clown at their funeral?
I make it just as the music stops and the room’s gone deathly silent. So, everyone’s heads turn to the back of the room as I flip flop my shoes up the center aisle to an available seat. As I settle myself in beside the plump woman with her purse poodle, she farts and of course everyone thinks it was me. Poodle purse lady starts chuckling—she thinks she fooled them. Two kids behind me start making fake fart noises, blowing on the back of their hands with wet lips and then the room erupts—laughing, farting, faking, crying—one big happy funeral.
From Vicki Sanches:
Beads of Sweat
She’s at a funeral “for the free food,” as she would tell it, but really, she’s just lonely. Sadie Gazwaldi owns several black outfits, which she’d purchased in the past for the funerals of her family members and her friends from the senior ladies’ club. All these people had passed on.
Always a lover of reading obituaries for interesting stories, Sadie one day got curious as to what those listed as “left behind” were like in real life. The deceased sounded like such great, accomplished folk Sadie was sure their kin would be nice people, and possibly make good friends for a lonely elderly woman.
This one was at the fancy funeral home, and that made Sadie feel a little like she was punching above her bracket. The somber velvet drapes, the gold-leaf crown molding, and even the paintings in the entry walls seemed to say to her, “shame on you.” Paintings of Scotland—grassy scenes with sharp-eyed dogs and deeply rooted old-growth trees. “Who is this woman?” They asked of her, silently, looking down from their gilt frames as Sadie sheepishly signed her name in the “welcome friends and family” book.
“Who the hell are you?” a high-pitched voice called out. Sadie jumped in her pumps and looked around. No one was looking at her. She walked further into the room, and looked at the funeral director, who was standing in the back left corner.
“Who the hell are you?” someone said again. Sadie turned forward, toward the casket, but still no one was looking at her, so she moved closer. She made her way to the casket and knelt on the kneeler. This took all her willpower, as her knees were well past their warranty. But kneel she did, so that she wouldn’t stand out. Sadie bent her head in prayer, wrapped her rosary around her fingers, and gripped the strand of beads tightly. She’d had these beads since she was a girl in middle school.
“Who the hell are you?” Sadie jumped up, and as she did, she pulled too hard on the rosary. The old string broke and her beads scattered across the floor. “Shit.” She whispered as she knelt on the floor now and scrambled to pick up the rolling mess she’d made.
Just then she heard the voice again, and it seemed to come from the coffin: “Who the hell are you?” Sadie looked toward the sound, and now saw a large parrot, perched well behind the coffin.
“My god.” Sadie thought. “A fucking parrot?” Sadie rarely swore, even in her head as she was now. But her knees hurt from the kneeler and hurt even more as she knelt on the floor trying to recapture all her runaway beads. She was sure she was currently committing several sins simultaneously: Cursing in her head, cursing out loud by a coffin, not to mention the busted rosary. Her thighs hurt now, and her back, and she was sure that if she didn’t just get up, she’d freeze down there and require help just to stand, the curse of the older population. Plus, the line to the casket was backing up behind her. So, she stood, grabbing onto the casket as she did. “There we go, that’s probably another sin while I’m at it.” She thought.
Sadie walked toward the back of the room. She had no desire now to meet the deceased’s surviving family. She was quite sure they had had enough of her. Sadie thought that she’d just sit in a chair until she stopped shaking. She sat next to a lovely looking tiny woman. “Can you believe they have a parrot at a funeral home? Who does that?” Sadie asked her.
The friendly looking tiny woman suddenly grew large with rage. “I’ll have you know that that was my parrot as a girl, and I gifted it to my nephew, who is in that casket. Chirpy will probably outlive you too, you old cow!”
“Oh lord.” Sadie thought. She stammered out: “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t know!” Sadie stood to leave, but just then a family member slipped on one of the beads, which had rolled all the way from the casket to the doorway. The person was sprawled on the floor by the exit. A group of people rushed over to help the clearly injured person. The crowd now blocked Sadie’s escape route.
The tiny old lady next to her said to Sadie: “Look what you’ve done! And who the hell are you?”
From Tracy Phillips:
It All Began in Third Grade
Louise wandered down to the 24-hour Stop and Go on a whim at 2am on a Tuesday night in mid-October. At twenty-four years old, she knew bad things happen to good people who make poor life choices…but where to begin…how to ferret out that first bad choice that had started her on a downward spiral leading to this the Stop and Go liquor aisle at 2am on a Tuesday?
Was it that time when she was in third grade at St. Margaret Mary’s when she washed Fred Pugh’s pimply face with a combination of snow, ice and gravel while holding him down in the school parking lot after he made a disparaging remark about her appearance? Well, there had been other earlier, minor transgressions but this one earned her a trip to the principal’s office with her mother in attendance, six weeks’ worth of detentions, a good old-fashioned willow-tree switching from her father, and Fred’s mother, who also happened to be their next-door neighbor, no longer offered her, “How you doing, sweetie?” when she greeted Louise.
Without conscious intent, Louise’s fingers wrapped around a bottle of Absolut vodka and clutched it tightly. She remembered going to the Harvest Moon dance with Fred in high school. Her mother said she needed to atone for what she did to him in third grade by asking him to go with her. Louise was always doing penance for something, now she had to add a seven-year-old transgression to her list of things to atone for (hadn’t she already paid enough for this one?) Once she consented to go to the dance with Fred, Fred’s mother must have felt just deserts had been served because she began again with that “How you doing, sweetie?”
Louise thought it was mostly her conscience that caused Fred’s facial injuries to seem so exaggerated. He was an obsequious little twit, kind of like Edie Haskell on those old re-runs– so good when adults were around but not so much when they weren’t. Louise didn’t like to look at him, she never did. She was a good Catholic girl with a healthy dose of conscience but she really didn’t want to have to go with Fred to the Harvest Moon dance.
Over the years of knowing Fred’s family, she saw that he and his mother were very good at playing the pity card on vulnerable people-pleasers (of which Louise’s mother was one). They wielded their pity cards like battle axes felling victim after victim. People avoided them on the street and they were rarely included in neighborhood parties; Fred and his mom were the consummate Debbie Downers, always ready with a wet blanket to throw on any happy occasion. Louise was loathe to acknowledge that since she allowed her mother to brow beat her into asking Fred to the dance, she too was a victim of one of their pity-card attacks.
So, she had gone to the dance with the boy no one liked, and endured snickers from her frenemies as she danced with him under dramatically pulsating and shifting lights that only occasionally revealed the bumps, cratered scars and pimply growths ever present on his face (they weren’t that bad, really, not that bad). She recalled Fred having to take massive doses of antibiotics for many months after a secondary infection set in… a little voice of reason piped up, “Hey Louise, the kid already had a thriving community of blackheads and severe nodulocystic acne - you are not entirely to blame…did this mean her damned voice of reason believed she was partially to blame?!
After the official dance was over, Fred produced from under the seat of his car a full bottle of Absolut vodka and suggested they celebrate their reconciliation (they were never friends nor would they ever be friends) so instead of going to the After Party (where his face would be aglow in all its glory under the harsh lights of the gym, and her conscience would run amok) she agreed to drive to the local park to drink the Absolut which she had told everyone was her favorite alcoholic beverage (all she really had to compare it with was her Grandma’s Lydia Pinkham’s).
As they drank, the streetlights of the park shone in the window and each dip and rise on Fred’s face took on mammoth proportions (there was no way those tiny scars could look so heinous). Louise tried not to look at the dented and banged up countenance before her and she told herself its severity was only a figment of her imagination that was in cahoots with her over-active conscience. After the vodka was half drunk and she and Fred were fully drunk, Fred said something about her owing him payment for what she had done in third grade. He turned into the proverbial octopus her more experienced girlfriends had told her about from their dates, and she had to fend him off.
When his adolescent fumbling and mild coercion was unsuccessful, Fred turned his sallow, haggard face upon her with its strange nooks and crannies under the glare of those abysmal park lights and dealt with alacrity his strongest pity card. Louise must make up for her sin against him and his ravaged face by consenting to have intercourse. Yes, the dolt actually used the word intercourse. It was then she bashed him in the nose with what was left of the Absolut.
Back in the Stop and Go, a strange apparition appeared out of nowhere. The arrival of this peculiarity interrupted Louise’s trip down memory lane and she could see at once, it was a little old lady who appeared to be a nun. It was sometimes hard to tell these days since many elected not to wear the traditional habit, but this one was a nun in the old-fashioned sense, resplendent in her penguin-inspired ensemble. If she were not so old, Louise would have suspected her of wearing a Halloween costume (you know, the sexy nurse, sexy teacher and sexy nun get ups), but this one was not at all sexy and appeared to be the real deal. Her ancient face was pulled tight with the veil and coif so that nary a strand of hair could be seen. She floated effortlessly (there was magic in the old-style habits that allowed that) and as she moved steadily toward Louise, her cart squeaked and her arms shook as though she bore a heavy load.
The cart’s basket was full of something Louise could not make out. How peculiar I must look, she thought as she stood staring with her mouth open and clutching that bottle of Absolut (she didn’t even like Absolut after that fateful night in high school) - why was she holding it now at 2 am on a Tuesday night in the Stop and Go? Her mind went back to the facial she gave Fred in the parking lot, then to the Harvest Moon night she broke his nose. Fred had two black-yes and a crooked schnozzola that never quite straightened to its original proportions to add to his to his list of attributes (she wasn’t a psychopath, really, she felt quite terrible about all of it!)
Louise glanced down and quickly perused the items in Sister Shakey’s cart.
To her utter amazement, it was full of…it was full of…Louise dipped her head closer to confirm what she thought it was full of.
Massengill douche.
She was confused on many levels as anyone would be who had inadvertently entered the theater of the absurd. She felt it necessary to repeat to herself the facts as she understood them to be so as not to lose her tenuous grip on reality. Her words immediately sounded like the beginning of a bad joke with a silly punchline, “A nun walks into a Stop and Go at 2am on a Tuesday night to…purchase a shit load of Massengill…”.
Wait. Was that “Extra Cleansing Tropical Breeze” Massengill? Yep, sure enough, it was. The labels on the boxes she could read at the top of the considerable pile in the cart said just that.
Louise had attended Catholic schools most of her young life and had believed in some way that certain female bits, passions and desires were forfeited by women who were called to the life. Of course, as an adult she knew this was not the case, yet this acknowledgement did not include the possibility of a nun hauling around a case (at least) of Massengill douche in her shopping cart at 2am on a mid-October Tuesday in the Shop and Go.
She tried to find some logic in the alternate universe she found herself inhabiting alongside of Sister Shakey just as the little nun stopped in front of her and frowned with disapproval at the Absolut vodka Louise was still clutching in her right hand.
WTF!?
What nerve Sister Shakey had to judge her. She, a freaking nun with a cart full of Masengill intended to remedy God knows what sort of catastrophic emergency female gynecological event!
As their eyes met, Louise defiantly stared at the Masengill as Sister Shakey accusingly glared at the bottle of Absolut. No one spoke a word yet there was an uneasy understanding of some level of mutual transgression. The nasty Absolut spoke in no uncertain terms about Louise’s current state of sinful choices and intent (but picking up the Absolut was not a conscious choice, for God’s sake, she didn’t intend to have it in her hand any more than she intended to scar Fred for life). But the Masengill, however seemingly damning, had no logical explanation, obvious or traceable culpability on the part of Sister Shakey. In the great courtrooms of the universe, Louise would not come out ahead against a nun, no matter how strange and unexplainable the baggage that the nun toted around.
The stare-down continued to the point of ridiculousness and Louise felt herself growing more and more uncomfortable. Something about this woman was familiar. Very familiar.
St. Margaret Mary’s: attended first through fifth grade before transferring to Sacred Heart because her mother was fed-up with Louise always getting in trouble. That face belonged to Sister Meldrida! A donning recollection of witnesses called to verify the debacle which caused Fred to undergo several months of antibiotic treatments and left him with a ravaged face, exhumed the buried memory of this nun. Sister Meldrida, though not one of Louise’s teachers, was the star witness to the parking lot beatdown of Fred.
But worse, way worse than all of this, Sister Meldrida knows her mother.
Louise had to get the hell out of this place before Sister Meldrida remembered her and reported to her mother that she saw Louise at 2am on a Tuesday in the Stop and Go with a bottle of Absolut in her hand.
In a panic, Louise rushed for the door.
Never mind figuring out the meaning behind this bizarre evening or what the massive quantities of Massengill meant, just please Lord, don’t let Sister Meldrida remember who I am and tell on me (again).
Just as there was hope and as she was about to make her escape unscathed, a deep male voice said, “Are you going to pay for that vodka, Louise Ettinger?”
She knew that voice. And that voice apparently knew her too.
Slowly Louise turned to face the face of the boy she had disfigured (only slightly, really, his scars had healed quite nicely and now in his adulthood even lent him a ruggedly handsome kind of appeal).
Who wouldda thunk it? On a mid-October, Tuesday at 2am in the Stop and Go.
Fred Pugh.
Sister Meldrida.
All that was missing to complete the evening was an appearance by her old principal and her mother.
The little bell at the top of the Stop and Go’s door jingled as an elderly man and woman stepped somberly inside.
The sound morphed slowly into a buzzer and it blared loudly over and over.
Louise awakened to the sound of her alarm clock and the fresh tropical morning breeze of mid-July wafted through her window. She lay for a moment in her bed as the dream slowly faded as most dreams do when confronted with the light of day.
She smiled lazily remembering the exquisite feeling of washing Fred’s smug face with a mixture of snow, ice and gravel after what he had said to her. And she didn’t forget to remember with some bit of pleasure the satisfying sound of his nose as it met with the Absolut. Her overly active conscience, feelings of guilt, and the burden of being a good Catholic girl had been effectively relegated to dream land years ago. Her mother and her, while not on perfect terms, had come to an understanding and Louise no longer feared her disapproval or longed for her grudging affection. As for Fred and his mother, if either should ask, “How you doing sweetie?” Her answer would be, “Just fine. ABSOLUTELY fine!”
She checked the appointments on her cell phone and saw that she had an OBGYN appointment at 8, then her first customer was a Mildred Fred (something familiar and odd about that name). Mrs. Fred was down for a deep facial cleaning and microdermabrasion – Louise’s specialty.
It was going to be a glorious day!