It may be hard to believe, but I’ve been writing this column for almost 7 years. I suppose it’s hard to believe because one should get better in that amount of time. If I had been playing Texas Hold’em for that long, I’d probably have made it to one of those televised poker tournaments on ESPN by now. If I had been sculpting for 7 years, I would have created a large bust of someone famous and beautiful like Marilyn Monroe. Of course, since I have the artistic ability of a sea bass, and even 7 years wouldn’t have changed that, I would have later told everyone I was paying tribute to the late Ethel Merman instead. If I had been in a rock group, I would have made it, broken up with my band (due to artistic differences), and had a comeback tour by now. If I had started learning to fly an airplane 7 years ago…wait, then I’d be dead. No, I have several hundred columns that expanded our collective realm of discussion by introducing time-honored topics such as the water bra, the balding man’s comb-over, what to do when a squirrel attacks you in a bathroom, and black socks with shorts. In case you are wondering, I’m not quitting my column, but there is something else folks have been asking me to do for 7 years and that’s tell them how they, too can write a humor column.

     I get that question a lot. Usually it’s from someone who has majored in English in college, taken another year’s worth of seminars on creative writing, read every book on the subject, joined a writer’s group, and can cite every rule of good writing as readily as I can recite the lyrics to American Pie. There’s really nothing to tell those people other than, be funny, which let’s face it, if your social sphere is limited to the folks in the book club, the odds are diminished. Well, there goes my book club speaking invitations, but you said you wanted help and I’m willing to take one for the team.

     Another question is, “are you just a magnet for bizarre people and experiences or do you simply find the bizarre in everyday life?” My answer is that I got attacked by a squirrel and had a discussion with Kevin Costner and both instances took place in a public urinal inside the span of one month. What do you think? Even before I wrote the column, I lived through Three Mile Island, met David Koresh, lived through a California earthquake, had an ice cream cone with Dan Quayle and got locked in a dark room with Melissa Gilbert of TV’s Little House on the Prairie. Granted, the bizarre experiences don’t come as frequently these days, but I have never had to look too hard.

     It does help to be a little twisted. For instance, the time I had that ice cream with Dan Quayle, I was covering his visit to Texas and he took us into a DQ to show he was a man of the people. I asked him on camera if he realized that the DQ stood for Dairy Queen and that the sign wasn’t just a show of support for him. The look he gave me was priceless (he did play along after that, surprisingly). If you are in a line in the grocery store behind a large, loud, obnoxious woman in tight jeans that say “Guess” on the back pocket, do you ignore it, or does something deep inside you beg you to say to her, “Okay, I’ll give it a shot?”  

      A lot of people, mostly guys, say, “I could write a column.” My answer is always, “Go ahead.” I happen to believe that if you can make people laugh, it’s a good thing and we can never have enough laughter. These people will invariably tell me their idea. I laugh and ask them what they’ll write the next week, the next week, and the next week. Perhaps it is a combination of having bizarre experiences and creating them at the same time…either that, or just learning that puke is a lot funnier word than vomit and a well-placed “booger” can make a person’s entire novel. Either way, if it stops working, there’s always the book club (if they’ll have me).