Keep ‘Em Laughing

An MFRW Post – And check out the other blogs on the hop!

 

I have a confession. I’m the one that’s been putting the googly eyes on everything in the kitchen. Well, me and the boyfriend. Partners in crime and all that. (We’re a real 21st century Bonnie and Clyde.) We’ve been slowly decorating the salt shakers and soup cans and gaslighting the ever-loving daylights out of my family, causing them to turn on each other in googly-eyed accusation and demand.

It. Is. Hilarious. 

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Tonight, we have planned the final attack, and when they walk into the kitchen tomorrow, there will be nary a space without two googly eyes staring into their soul.

And they will find it hilarious. Because that’s how much family communicates. We talk in punchlines, puns and Marx Brothers quotes. Banter and witty repartee is the local dialect, combined with the ever-ubiquitous off-color joke or two and references to childhood stories that may or may not be true.

We are all artists, designers, writers, illustrators, and we communicate best when something is left unsaid, when the humor is in what isn’t spoken out loud, when the joke is somehow both highbrow and lowbrow at the same time. I am a 25-year-old Summa Cum Laude graduate and published author, positively giddy with the thought of putting googly eyes on the bulldog shaped sugar container.

baby-2604853_960_720There’s a lot my family gets about me that others don’t. We have all experienced life as a working artist, as a freelancer, as on spec. Each of us has our stories and our wounds from trying to make a career out of a passion. They understand that well.

But so much more than the dark, brooding artist life, my family has a specific tone of humor, a brand all our own. When my boyfriend watched Duck Soup for the first time, he came away with a better understanding of why I am the way I am. In order to survive a dinner in our house, you must be faster with the zinger than the person next to you.

And for me that’s fundamental. I sculpt heroes and heroines every day – brash and powerful, strong, capable, beautiful, intelligent. These are all important qualities. But I can do without each and every one of them. Because at the end of the day, if you can’t get a good laugh in this big, crazy, scary world, in this big, crazy, scary career, artist passion, heart-on-the-line path, then you’ll never survive.

My family didn’t just give me the tools to have a great time. They gave me the resources to laugh at the things that try to break me and to have a good giggling fit on the floor after I’ve been knocked down, before I get up, dust off and try again. ♦

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