Reading and Humor

Growing up, I loved to read. I was able to escape my life when I read books. I loved to let the written words become real using my imagination. I loved to read about others' lives and adventures, dreaming myself into the stories and fantasizing about being or doing something that the character in the story was doing. When I climbed into a book the clock sped up and hours flew by. Many times I found myself finishing a book in one marathon reading session.

Spelling, sentence structure, and other things I picked up from reading became almost second nature to me. As I grew older, the subject of English became my friend--rewarding me with easy A's through my younger years of school. While English might have been a logical career path for me to pursue, it was left by the wayside as I followed more exciting things. It wasn't my fault really--I just didn't know any better. I had no career counseling from anyone. My parents were smart, but weren't well-enough educated to see that I had something going for me. They only saw the areas of my schooling that I was deficient in, providing dad plenty of ammunition to chastise me about those. Math, music, and physical education were a few of my problem areas.

I developed a sort of a coping mechanism for my introverted, shy persona over time, and it got me in trouble constantly. It was my sense of humor. I grew to love the feeling I got when I made people laugh, and I learned things that worked and things that didn't. I learned timing. My style (if you could call it that) revolved largely on inserting the perfect single quip at the perfect moment. More often than not they were well-received. The double-entendre's were always good, but they could easily backfire, and often did. 

Over time I drifted away from the "cheap laugh" (though I still use it sparingly) and moved into blog writing creativity while telling a story. I learned subtle little things about delivery, almost as if I were pulling the point I was trying to make instead of pushing it. It was a shift in perspective that would sometimes completely change a story.