There’s been a marked decline in laughter around here in recent months.  Funny things continue to happen all around, I’m sure, but they neep by unnoticed, don’t get to me in the same way.  It’s kind of creepy.  Virtually everyone I know seems in the grip of this grim new way of being.  

This is abstract, I realize, and calls for a colorful  illustration.   I can offer examples, but they only heighten the creepiness of this laff drought.  Why bother going down this road, if I’m not prepared to squeeze out at least one example?

OK, here’s one.  I have an old friend who is famous for being manipulative, sometimes in ways so overt they’re comical.  It is such a part of who he is that most of the time I don’t even notice the agenda he is always clutching just behind his back.  Things must always be arranged to maximize his advantage, somehow, even though how it actually benefits him is often hard to say and the price he pays for this is sometimes high.  There are many people like him, and I don’t point this out to be critical of the old fellow.

I have another old friend who is in the process of rebirthing himself.  Hard work!  I understand how hard this is and I applaud his devotion to emerging as a more mindful, compassionate, grounded person.   This chap and I have shared many a wheezy chuckle over the years over the constant inventiveness of our manipulative friend.

I got up early the other day, for me, resentful about the short sleep, in order to accommodate our host’s schedule (turns out he’d accidentally pushed everything three hours earlier without realizing it).   I move to offbeat circadian rhythms, true, and it’s rare I’m in bed before 4 a.m.   My mind gets into full power mode around 11 or 12 every night, always been that way.   So early for me is mid-morning for most other people, granted.

On short sleep I drank coffee, paid bills, answered emails, thought a little about business, showered, dressed and then it was time to go.  As my friend arrived to take us to the home of our  host I was opening a yogurt, which I bolted standing in the kitchen.  My friend smiled merrily as I complained that I had to choke down my breakfast so as not to be late to this, no doubt, artificially early play date.  Then he hurried me out to the car.

As we drove he mentioned a stream of messages he hadn’t listened to from our friend the host.   “I didn’t listen to them, I figure they were just his usual string of nervous proddings and I didn’t feel like hearing them,” he said breezily.  Then the friend called and said we wouldn’t be starting at 12:00 after all, that 2:00 was more realistic, since he was out shopping with his wife and wouldn’t be home much before 2:00.   I listened to this impassively, responded mildly and rang off.  I even let the statement that he was making things easier for me by doing it later roll off and land soundlessly on some imaginary pillow.

We headed back to Sekhnet’s where my friend made himself lunch while I went upstairs and took care of some business I hadn’t had time for, rushing to be in the car by noon.

But here’s the thing that creeps me out.  That my manipulative friend didn’t bother calling or dropping me an email the night before with the new time– to be expected.  That he said he’d moved things back to make it easier for me– well, a little problematic, in light of how much easier it actually made things, but not unexpected.  What creeps me out is that as we headed back over to our friend’s house my friend who was driving said, casually, “I heard his first message at 11:05, about not starting until 2,  but I was already in the middle of rushing through my errands to be here by noon.”

So when I was wolfing my yogurt, and complaining about being put under this kind of time crunch, he already knew there was no time crunch.   Still, he didn’t tell me to sit, relax , eat breakfast, that we had two hours, he pretended we were still running late.

“Why would you put something like this on the web, you querulous, carping prick?” asks a chorus of the two or three who will one day read this post.

Why, indeed.  I told you something creepy is in the air.