To whom it may concern,
~ I'd like to thank you in advance for taking the time to read this. You may
have to bear with me a little but don't worry, I don't want any money or anything.
I just want to tell you about something. Did you ever have something strike
you so funny you just had to tell somebody? Well, the funniest thing just happened,
but first you got to understand that when there's no one around I talk to myself
a lot. I hope this story doesn't make me look crazy, because you should know
I'm well aware that it makes me look ridiculous. In addition to the fact that
I talk to myself this anecdote also reveals that I'm vain and secretly aspire
to be witty.
~So, you know how a lot of times when you're talking to yourself it's like a
hypothetical conversation played out in your head? I was in my room talking
like that about god knows what, when this totally original expression pops out
of my mouth without any preparation at all, blowin' dead presidents like Marilyn
Monroe's ghost. Eh? You like that? Wit is often more successful when it appears
extemporaneous. What's even funnier is how upset I was that no one had been
there to hear it.
~It was a perfect specimen of improvisation. In whatever forgotten context,
I was saying to my imagined interlocutor that lately I had been blowin'.., at
which time I might have just said, 'a bunch of money,' and continued right along
prating to myself. Except that, for some reason, the first word for money that
came to my mind was 'benjamins,' and I'm self-conscious about using expressly
black or Ebonic terms, just because I think it's a really easy way for a white
guy to come across like he's trying to be something he's not, which gives the
impression he's disingenuous, insecure and a lot of other things that I would
never want my invisible friend to think of me, even though, being invisible
he doesn't have much personal stake in racial issues.
~Fearing that I'd look like a stuttering moron if I paused too long over a seemingly
routine phrase, I hastened not to break the pace I had set while talking to
myself. The most direct segway that my frantic mind could find from 'benjamins'
brought me to 'dead presidents' just in time to save face. However, the habitual
modern American use of the word 'like' in place of more aptly inarticulate utterances,
such as 'huh' and 'um' is, many would agree, in most cases pejorative. In my
own case the habit nearly counteracted my recent recovery, and left me open
once again to the prospect of not showing well in my one-sided conversation,
but then I remembered the oft overlooked potential that such use of 'like' has
to color our speech through proliferate invitations to simile. So, I paused
long enough to make it obvious that I had to make up something on the spot,
but not so long that I appeared awkward or at a loss (no amount of practice
could impart to any performer that kind of naturally ad-libbed timing) and the
rest, as they say, was history. The clever comparison descended through inspiration
pure of any identifiable expedient or influence save the spirit inherent in
the word,.. 'inspired.'
~What I thought was even funnier was the paradoxical possibility of deliberately
rendering myself ridiculous by writing down this story about how vain I am,
but the real punch line here is the ironic continuance: I thought it was so
damn funny when it occurred to me that no matter how self-deprecating I made
my tale, no matter how humbled I was by the act of retelling it, I could only
ever enhance my appearance of vanity with a story so inherently self-obsessed
and that made so many demands on the reader, I just had to pass this on to somebody.
Ha! Isn't that a riot?
Anyway, thanks for reading. – Renée