Being funny gets tougher

I have this thing about wanting to be funny. I really like making people laugh.

Not sure exactly how that started; probably discovered I could do that in high school and it made up somewhat for not being popular. I remember being able to make a dripping sound with my mouth in my math class and how great everyone thought it was that the teacher would look up at the ceiling trying to find a leak on a perfectly sunny day.

I've never been much for telling actual premeditated jokes. I'm much better at responding in a funny way to what other people say. Some people call that wit. I don't usually do that, having found it doesn't take a lot to add half- or nit- to -wit.

I do find that as I get older, it gets more difficult to be funny — or at least to be perceived as being funny. In my mind, I'm a riot. Other people's, not as much.

It's more difficult to be funny at work. I think it must be because I'm getting older. No, wait a minute ... because everyone else is getting younger. Yeah, that's it. Someone'll say something and I'll come back with a dynamite snappy retort. And then I just get "the look." It's a look that says, "OK, we're going to smile and nod, not wanting to insult you, but hoping maybe you'll go back to your own desk now."

Finding my medium's been a problem, too. When I worked at KVEC Radio in San Luis Obispo about a hundred years ago, the program director told me I was more of a visual act. Considering I was in radio then and in the newspaper now, I may have followed the wrong calling.

In any case, I still love making people laugh. There isn't a better feeling in the world. Well, maybe one or two better feelings. But not many more than that. OK, three tops, but that's it.

Miss you a bunch

"I missed you."

People say that all the time, but I'm not always sure they mean it.

I just got back to work from vacation. No one said it to me and that's OK. Most people probably didn't even realize I was gone. Last time I told someone at work I missed them during their vacation, they looked at me funny. Apparently this was an emotion that was a little awkward at work.

On the other extreme, I've also had people tell me "I miss you." While I'm there. Usually, it's a situation where I don't see this person very often and they're expressing the fact that they'd like to see me more often. Usually, I say something like "How can you miss me? I'm here."

Which reminds me of the country song "How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away?"

Back when I was Wes Parker

Back when I was a kid, I used to listen to just about every Dodger game all summer. I'd go out in the back yard, turn on the radio and pretend I was a player.

Best guy for me to be was Wes Parker. He threw left-handed, I threw left-handed. He played first base, I played first base. He was good-looking, I was ... left-handed.

I had two sweatshirts that I cut the sleeves off of, one white for home games, one gray for road games. My mom was nice enough to sew Dodger patches on the left sleeves and that was as close I got to playing for the Dodgers.

In fact, that's pretty much as close as I got to playing baseball at all. Never played Little League even though many of my friends did. Just never thought I had the talent to play; certainly never had the self-esteem. And my folks never pushed me in that direction.

But baseball has always been important to me. My mom was a huge Dodger fan. I always used to say the reason I became such a big fan was because the Brooklyn Dodgers won their only World Series when she was pregnant with me. I'm sure her yelling and jumping up and down influenced me while I was still in the womb.

When I got older, I still listened to nearly every game. By then I was really into scoreboards. It sounds kind of silly, but I've always thought scoreboards were cool. I always liked how they record history every night and always had a thing about uniform numbers and how they'd be displayed on the scoreboard.

I accumulated a huge amount of those preschool magnetic letters and numbers and put together a replica of the Dodger Stadium scoreboard that I fashioned from looking at photographs.

Not only this, but I would also imitate the Dodgers' public address announcer, John Ramsay. I got to where I knew the uniform number of every player in the National League.

Wow, was I a geek or what?

Writing columns

I won't profess to be the best columnist in the world (or even at my newspaper), but I do enjoy it. It's the best part of my job.

Red Smith said to write a column all you have to do is open a vein and bleed a little. But I think the best columns (or at least my best) nearly write themselves. They're the ones that take almost no time to write. They just pour out.

The start of it all

People have told me (OK ... a person has told me) I should do something like write my memoirs. Well, I told them I'd have to be famous to do that. They said I was a local celebrity. I replied that if I was a local celebrity, I'd be making more money.

Still, they insisted it would be cool -- and perhaps therapeutic -- to put down a few of my reminiscences, not just about work but about life, and maybe a few things from my columns.

I think this person was telling me to do this primarily because they want to convince me that maybe I am at least somewhat famous. Semi-famous.

Quasi-famous.

So, we'll see how this goes. Not sure anyone'll read this. Not sure anyone should. But I hope you do.