humor

I worked with a young man who was having trouble with writing an essay in English. He's a class clown and spends more time getting in trouble because of his wit than he does getting his written work done. I had a conference with the young man about his inspirations and he talked about comedians that have taught him to laugh and make fun of the life he must live. After brainstorming and playing around with his high school experiences he began thinking about how important humor has been to him and his friends as they survived the high school experience.

The young man discussed some tragedies in his life and admitted that humor was his survivor tool kit. He was able to think about the ways he used whimsical learning to survive the tougher times in his world. The result was a an essay that was developed about his comic role models. This reminded me of Bill Cosby and his wit that influenced my childhood, especially his dentist skit.

Karma is the recognition that there are two ways tear fall from our eyes: tragedy and comedy. When a writer can tap into this, I say he's on the road of affecting audiences. We laugh too little and inhibit ourselves too much. I'm all about the chuckling in the writing process.