confession humor – Gentle Humor

I am a crazy person – crazy for doing what I did, and even crazier for telling you about it. But I said I’d write something tonight and I’ve procrastinated until it’s late and I’m tired and woe is me. This story I can do quick.

Here’s the back story. While we were at our friends’ vacation house in Olympia, my husband bought a bunch of live clams and cooked most of them, but decided to cull out some for us to take back home the next day. When he got ready to cook the rest of the clams, he found a broken one and decided all the clams could be bad, so he chucked them in the garbage.

I was livid. Why didn’t he just cook them all at our friends’? Why did he buy them in the first place because there was already way too much food and we couldn’t’ plow through it all? Why wasn’t he more careful bringing them home? These are all things I made sure, as a dutiful wife, that he clearly understood after he tossed those clams.

But those weren’t the reasons I was so irritated. I was P.O.’d because I knew good and well that I’d think about those clams in the garbage, dying a slow miserable death as the summer heat got to them, wondering what they were thinking in their little clam brains as the life oozed out of them like the yellow goo from a festering pustule, and knowing that they were calling, in their tiny clam voices, “Somebody please help us.”

I knew I’d lose sleep, and I knew I’d remember it with remorse all the days of my life and into the very grave. This is what made me mad as a hornet, fit to be tied, angry as a Tasmanian devil caught in blackberry briars.

Late last night I went out to that filthy, stinking garbage can and fished out those clams, one by one, amid the coffee grounds, corn husks, and used feminine hygiene products, and put them into a bowl in the refrigerator because, according to Google, that’s how you keep clams alive. I planned to drive them to the beach and put them back in the bay.

So this morning I talked my daughter into going with me and we headed to Netarts, two hours away. We waded into the ice-cold Oregon bay, full of squishy mud and pointy rocks, and I gave those poor clams back to the clear brown sea. I don’t know how many survived the ordeal in the cooler, garbage can, and refrigerator. I don’t know what will happen to them or whether they will be able to make a home where I left them, or if the seagulls and crabs will feast on them when the tide goes out, but I do know I will sleep tonight because they aren’t in my garbage can screaming silently for help.

And if that trip to the beach makes me a crazy woman, I’d rather be crazy than wrestling with guilt for the next six hours. In fact, you could say I’m, well, uh, happy as a clam. Snicker, snicker.

I’ve got a confession to make. This has been bothering me for minutes upon minutes. The blog I just posted did not arrive on time. What I’m trying to say is that, after 105 days of posting blogs every single day – even when I was sick or tired or depressed and totally humorless – yesterday I spaced posting blog number 106 on the appointed day.

You see, we went out to eat last night and I consumed mind-altering beverages, which has not stopped me blogging before, but then there was an hour and a half phone call from my cousin Nancy who lives in Memphis when I got home. She has great stories to tell about her pets and prospective boyfriends who all have an assortment of physical or mental disabilities that make me laugh nearly to asphyxiation, and I was thoroughly entertained. I didn’t start dozing off until the last few minutes.

A faraway voice kept calling my name, louder and louder, and I startled awake and picked the phone back up, apologized, and spent the next fifteen minutes saying my goodbye’s, then got up and promptly grabbed a bag of Cheetos, which I’d been craving earlier but told myself, “No, you don’t need the extra calories.” However, after spending so long on the phone I felt I’d somehow burned exactly the same amount of calories that were in that bag of Cheetos so I was justified.

As I savored the Cheetos, I watched the end of National Lampoon’s Las Vegas vacation starring Chevy Chase and felt that it had been a great day all in all, especially since I’d stayed up the night before until 2:30 doing a midterm project for an online course I’m taking. I thought the topping on the whole day would be to watch a Seinfeld rerun in the comfort of my own bed. I climbed between the crisp, inviting sheets, turned on Seinfeld, and woke up this morning.

When I opened my eyes, I started running through the mental list of everything I needed to accomplish for the day, which is what I do every morning so I can linger in the warm bed a little longer. I thought about what subject I’d cover in my blog, then I thought about what I’d written yesterday, and I almost sat straight up in bed. GASP! I’d gone to sleep last night without writing in my blog!!!!!

What am I going to do? What am I going to do? What am I going to do? (This is my way of showing I was in a panic.) I take this blog very seriously. I take this one-year commitment to blog every day very seriously too, even though there are many days I’m in a foul temper and don’t WANT to try to be funny.

This morning I could not go back in time and un-space my blog, though that’s what I would have done in a heartbeat if I could, so I decided I’d try to sneak the missed day’s blog in and hope no one noticed. I arrived at my computer and saw that I had left the webpage up about being passive-aggressive from my research yesterday – a supreme stroke of good luck because it gave me my topic to write about. I whipped out that column and posted it post haste (translation: “in three shakes of a lamb’s tail”), then wondered what I’d write about for the official “today’s” column.

That’s when the guilt set in. Hadn’t Google just told me that passive-aggressive people don’t get things done and then make excuses? Hadn’t I just told everyone in the universe that I was going to try to improve – albeit without a journal?

So I’m confessing right now that I got derailed yesterday. There. I’ve said it. But I’m going to keep going on with my pledge to do a blog every day because I’m going to follow through, by golly, get back up on the horse right now, and besides I’ve got my public to consider (all 10 of you), and nobody’s perfect and, as Robert Muller says, “To forgive is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness.” Or as Oscar Wilde said, “Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.” And as Thomas S. Szasz says, “The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.” I’m only asking that you, my loyal readers, be neither stupid nor wise, but just be naïve about my lapse. I appreciate it.

Now I’m going to post this, and I hope not to miss again, but, as you may know, 365 days is a long time, so please be patient and understanding if there comes a day in the future that I have another lapse. Remember my own quote that I just this minute made up, “It’s better to be naïve and nice than to be a b-word and wise.” Thank you. Thank you very much.

Suzanne Olsen's Humor Blog - I don't offend some of the people most of the time

Tag: confession humor

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