What's In A Name? Beyond The Boobs

Everyone knows that both men and women have private parts that they tend to name. These parts are the ones that demonstrate the difference between men and women. As I was sitting in the bathroom today (which is where I do my best thinking), I began wondering about this.and why I should limit it to the Honeydew Twins (a couple of nice melons).

Choosing a name for other body parts is not something that comes naturally. You have to take into

Clinton and Reagan

consideration the natural traits of said part, which part it is, your relationship to that part, and your own sick personality for wanting to name your body in the first place. Have I totally over-thought this? Oh, yeah!

The first was my belly. It is far to much a major part of my life and it is big. Far bigger that I would want. So she became Bertha Big-Belly. That was easy. Now, the butt. Not as big. Overall, probably the closest I come to having anything that could be called "skinny." This one wasn't as easy, but I had it. "Back-sida Ida."

I reached into 1920s slang to call my knees "The Bees." The bees knees was a  phrase that was used to indicate something wonderful. The Bees have been a wonderful source of support all my life.

After that they started coming more easily (and at times strangely). My hands are Clinton and Reagan (left and right respectively -- Hillary and Nancy). My arms are Huggy Bear and Snookums. My feet are the Walkers. That is not just a name, but an encouragement to keep doing just that. My legs are Starsky and Hutch. No reason -- it just sounds fun.

My head and brain are the A-Team (although some days it shifts to the Twilight Zone).


This is about where I decided where I should really stop before someone decides that I need to be institutionalized.  I named just one more -- my face. I have chosen to call it Kenley..This is an homage to the two people who gave me this face -- Ken and Shirley.

By the way, did I mention that I have OCD? Not officially, just as a hobby. Next up? Traffic lights I have named.

Oh, how I wished I was kidding.

Zingers - Love or Hate?

There are things that are politically correct and things that are not. Over the past few decades we have learned the face of bigotry against different races, religions, gender, gender identification, and disabilities. For the most part we agree that we must be kinder in the way we treat people in these areas. The one area that we are still struggling is the way we treat fat people. It seems that it is still open season on us, despite the fact that the bulk of the country is overweight (pun not intended but appreciated).

There is a fine line between telling a joke and making fun of someone. A lot of people don't know where this dividing line lies.

First of all, for all of the idiots out there -- you don't need to point out our fat to us. We have already realized this fact from the sobbing sound the scale makes when we step on it. Also, don't think that humiliating us is what it will take to get us to lose weight. If that actually worked this would be among the skinniest on earth rather than the opposite. You also need to look in the mirror. You could be the pot calling the kettle fat.

There was a recent kerfuffle on line about a guy who took a woman's photo from her blog that showed her holding a sign that said "This is what a feminist looks like." He reposted it with a comment that it was just as he figured -- indicating that only fat women and perhaps women without the perfect airbrushed look would be a feminist. Yeah. Tell it to former Playboy Bunny Gloria Steinem. This kind of crap attitude is a large part of where feminism stems from. But I take this guy with a grain of salt. He is undoubtedly the loser he was accusing this woman of being. Hello! Pot, it's the kettle calling!

Oh, yes, you could be handsome and well-muscled as all get out. But inside you are small, gnarled, and distasteful, possessing the need to make others feel like less so that you can feel like more. Humor should not come at someone else's expense. You delude yourself by mistaking the desire to hurt under the mask of the desire to be funny. Shame on you!

Now, I can take a real joke. I love Gabriel Iglesias's five (and now six) levels of fat -- big, healthy, husky, fluffy, and DAMN!!!! More recently he added Aw, Hell No! to the list. Now I could delude myself into thinking I am any of the first three. I, like Gabriel, am fluffy. I have verged on DAMN!!!! at one point, but have lost a few lbs. to get back. I did not do it for vanity's sake. I did it to improve my health and mobility. Of course I still need to lose weight and want to, but it really is easier said than done.

Just recently I got into a fit of joke telling about my weight with a Facebook friend and fellow writer.  I was having a blast. I love being funny. So I copied my jokes and will share them here with you:

My figure is more like Jabba the Hut's than it is like Princess Leia's. The whole look worked better when I was younger and not so, ummm, spongy. (This was in relation to the fact that I have three Princess Leia costumes hidden away in an old suitcase.)

Last time I tried to wear a halter top in public five guys went blind. And that was with a jacket over it.

I thought of buying myself a tent to wear, but the sporting goods store didn't carry my size.

I didn't wear a costume for Halloween one year and everyone thought I was going as Miss Piggy.

I went as the Flying Nun and people took bets on just how high the wind speed would actually have to be to get me off the ground. An F5 tornado was the final consensus.

I tried to go down to the Mall one Halloween as a skinny person but the police kept trying to break up the crowd.

Last time I went to the beach some guy with a harpoon showed up. I had a whale of a time.

Last time I went to the beach some guy with a harpoon showed up. I had a whale of a time.

I went jogging without a bra once and gave myself a black eye.

People used to try to give me support by telling me to keep my chins up.

If you laughed, good for you. The intention behind these was good-natured fun. It was also done through a bit of self-deprecation. People like Gabriel Iglesias and I can do that  because we understand that we are pointing at ourselves and not others. In like kind, he will make jokes about Hispanics and I won't. Since I am not Hispanic I do not have the background to go there. I could, on the other hand, go to what it is like to date a Hispanic. 

One of the keys to being funny rather than hurtful is to make it accessible to people. Make it key into their experiences or the experiences of the people close to them. The power of intention also comes in here. My jokes are not intended to hurt anyone. I point the finger only at myself and hope that other people, especially the fluffy ones, can identify and maybe feel a little kinder toward themselves.

And to the poster child for feminism -- you go girl! Leave the jerks out there in the dust where they belong. For the guys who get it -- bless you for you are truly men. 

Udderly Amoosing

Trying to write to a specific topic can be very difficult and challenging. It requires  some serious

lateral thinking. The example that comes to mind is from back when I was writing a lot of poetry and I was faced with writing a love poem. This was a baffling topic for me since I am not exactly a hearts and flowers kind of gal.

Each year the Poetry Society of Colorado would have their annual contests for members. There were twenty or so contests and I became determined to enter every one every year. Unfortunately for me there was a category for writing a love poem. I wracked my brain for days. Nothing was coming to me. I reread the description. ANY kind of love. Hmmmmm. I could work with ANY. What kinds of love were there? I didn't have to stick with the gushy, gooey romantic stuff that is ordinarily associated with a love poem.

So what was love to me? What examples of love did I note around me? Mother and child. Brother and sister. Father and tools. Humans and pets. My stepmother and housecleaning. I was getting closer. Having opened up alternate definitions of love was having an effect on me. From out the the blue I remember seeing a news story of a moose somewhere back east that had fallen in love with a cow.

Those gears in my head started grinding to loudly that the neighbors were complaining. I didn't need some saccharine tome to love. No indeed. I could go with my true strength in life -- humor! So I set to work. Boy, was this gonna be good. And it was. The resulting poem took second place in the contest.
Check it out here:

Opposite Attractions

©2000 by Laurie Kay Olson

The course of true love makes no excuse –

As was the case with a certain moose.

Though I can’t really tell you how,

He fell in love with a Jersey cow.

In the field where she placidly chewed her cud

He stood as though rooted in ankle-deep mud.

The townspeople tried to remove him in vain.

The harder they tried the more it was plain.

He watched his true love with adoring eyes

While she regarded him with mild surprise.

I’ve heard that those two are standing there yet,

As much in love as two species can get.

The moral of this story is simple and sweet –

Love may be found wherever two hearts can meet.

It is short, to the point, humorous and definitely falls into the category of ANY kind of love. I learned that I can write to just about any topic I'm given as long as I keep my mind wide open to the possibilities and don't just say "Oh, I can't do that!" The truth is that yes, I can. If I am really saying I can't I need to be honest with myself and say "This topic is so intimidating that I choose not to." 

Are there topics that I would choose not to write on? Well, certainly there are. I'm not into porn, Goth, punk, heavy metal and so on. I'm not taking some moral stance, I just don't have the background to go there -- not even with lateral thinking.

So before thinking that you can't write about something, take a small step to the right or left and take a look at the topic again. That may be all you need to see the subject in a different way and give you the inspiration to write something wonderful.

Ten Things I Still want to be When I Grow Up

1.     I still want to grow up to be tall, willowy, and graceful. Oh, I know that this is a long shot since none of the women on either side of the family are built like that, but a girl can dream can’t she. We are all short and round – at best we might be described as Rubenesque; at worst we could be called Weight Watchers rejects. *sigh*

2.     I still want to grow up to be a famous author. When I was younger I wanted to be Laura Ingalls Wilder. It took a few years to realize that the world has already had one of those. What the world needs now is a Laurie Kay Olson. Look out world my Great (Redneck) American Novel is on the way.

3.     I still want to grow up to be a ballerina. Is that even an option? Refer to #1 and insert memories of the hippos dancing in the movie Fantasia. Yup. Even those ladies put me to shame.

4.     I still want to grow up to be a mommy. Okay, there are reasons that that ship sailed long ago. I have settled for mothering a constant stream of cats. Maybe I need to change that to I want to grow up to be a crazy cat lady. OKAY! I want to grow up to be an even crazier cat lady.

5.     I still want to grow up to be a great comic actress. It would also be great to play the ingénue, but that would be a REAL stretch. On the other hand, it would be great comedy. For now I will settle for the fact that my friend Jane is a wonderful comic actress. I will bask in her glow.

6.     I still want to be a supermodel. For how that is likely to turn out, once again refer to #1. Please make up your own joke. I’ve got so many of them that I can’t choose. Like – what if I fell down while modeling clothes? I’d break the runway. I’d set off seismic sensors. I’d knock out all the rest of the other models. . . you get the idea. Have at it.

7.     I still want to grow up to be a great chef and I refuse to let the fact that I don’t really like to cook get in the way. I’m also not the best cook as is. I can make a kick-ass pot of chili, but a friend and I have reached an agreement to always go out because we are both lousy cooks overall. We both cook well enough to feed ourselves quite happily, but the outside world has much higher standards.

8.     I still want to grow up to be a cowgirl. I shall ignore the fact that I am afraid of horses (because one tripped and fell on me once). I shall also ignore the fact that I am afraid of heights and the last time I tried to ride a horse they gave me a horse so big his name was “Tank.” Maybe I should rethink this one.

9.     I still want to grow up to be a painter. It would help if I had any real talent at this like my friends Briggs and Annie, but this one I want to do just because I enjoy doing it. The paintings I have done so far aren’t masterpieces, but they have pleased me. I suppose that is all that really matters. I just don’t want to have to explain how I ended up with splotches of paint on my socks and nowhere else.

10.  Most of all I still just want to be myself when I grow up. I used to try to imagine myself when I was all grown up. It was a vague, beige image. I always left out one very important factor – that I would still be me. So now I view myself as the crazy old lady I was always destined to be. And that, more than anything, is what I want to be when I grow up.

Embarrassing Moments

If there is one thing that binds us together, not just as humans, but across species it is the tendency to become embarrassed when we do something noticeably and incredibly wrong.

My cat regularly misjudges the height of the table and kitchen counters and ends up hanging from the edge by her paws looking around for a way to regain her dignity before dropping to the floor in embarrassment. If I am looking she will slink off to recover her self-esteem elsewhere. If she thinks I didn't see she will just try again and make it with no problem.

When she first came to live with me she was entranced by everything around her as she memorized her new home. One day I was sitting on the toilet as she walked across the edge of the sink. She was looking around so much that she walked straight off the edge of the sink. Man was it hard not to laugh at her as she ran off to sulk in the living room for awhile.

Of course I have had my own moments to feel like dying. When I was a kid I was sight seeing with my father in San Francisco. I was trying to take in all the sights and sounds of Fisherman's Wharf when I did a full-body smack into a parking meter. My father just about died laughing and said, "You know you are supposed to leave those where they are!" It took a sizable portion of shrimp from a street vendor to improve my spirits again.

A few years later, when I was in college, I was taking a tap dancing class. Let me make it perfectly clear that, though I enjoy dancing, I am terrible at it. As a final requirement for the course we all had to perform in the spring dance concert. The teacher had worked out a routine for all of us to dance in a chorus line to "That's Entertainment." I was certainly entertaining when, during one performance, I spaced a couple of bars of music and started dancing the wrong part. I did recover and get back with the team, but I was horrified. I asked one of my friends "Do you know what I did?" He looked at me and said, "Did I see what you did? Yes. Do I know what you were doing? NO!" All these years later I still cringe at the memory.

Then there was the time I locked my keys in the car. Okay, I didn't just lock them in the car. I REALLY locked them in the car. I was babysitting a little girl at the time and had taken her with me to the grocery store. We had gotten back to my house and taken the groceries inside. I shut the trunk of my car and discovered that I was stuck fast to the back of my car. Then end of my tunic had stuck fast in the trunk.

I hollered for Erin to find my keys. She came out of the house a couple of minutes later saying that she couldn't find them. In the meantime I HAD found the keys. They were inside the pocket of my tunic which was now locked inside the trunk of the car. What to do?

I had Erin grab my coat from inside the car (naturally the rest of the car was unlocked). As discreetly as I could I slipped out of the tunic and into my coat. I went inside to call a locksmith to come and release my keys from the trunk. I told him my tale and he still insisted on asking, "How will I know which car is yours?" Duh. "It's the car with the blouse hanging off the back."

Some of the funniest things I have ever seen involve animals. Like the poor man who was cleaning out the elephants' pen and has an embarrassing accident:

There was also the elephant who demonstrated that you don't have to be human (or live with humans) to be embarrassed:

Granted, humans are more easily embarrassed than other creatures. We seem to be the only ones with some level of modesty regarding farting. And we get terribly embarrassed about delivering a load of air biscuits at an inopportune moment. We've all done it. We will all do it again. I don't have a specific story for this one even though I know I've done it. Like most people I either excuse myself or, more often, pretend it never happened.

A few weeks ago I was ago I was at my favorite Mexican restaurant with my friend Randi. The place has the best refried beans in the world and I had ordered an extra portion. I made an off-hand comment that I was now likely to blow the cat right off the bed that night. Randi laughed so hard she almost choked to death on her chimichanga.

For writers embarrassing moments are, like so many other moments, the stuff of creativity. They are pure gold. To make characters real they need to have truly human moments and embarrassment is one of the ways our egos are humbled when we get too full of ourselves.

My first book is humor, so the embarrassing is a huge part of what happens to people. It is not just embarrassment, but the way you tell it that makes it funny. Making it funny takes the sting out of it. Making it insulting just makes it nasty. So it depends on your story and your character just which way you are going to go with it.


So, how human are you?

Comedy -- Writing Funny

Historically the jester was the only one in the court who could make fun of the king. He was able to do this by hiding it within the jest. By making it funny and couching it in just the right phrase it becomes fairly painless. That doesn't mean that the jester never missed the mark and got sent to the dungeon, but for the most part he got away with murder.

These days comedians like Jay Leno, David Letterman, Stephen Colbert, and Jon Stewart point out the idiocies and absurdities of the moneyed and powerful elite. These guys are at the top of their game because they are so capable of hitting their target accurately. They strip bare the absurdities and juxtapositions down to the bare truth that we really knew was there all along. We laugh because we are surprised that they will say it. We laugh because we understand. We laugh because they are right.

They are funny instead of venomous because they back it up with love. Love? Yes. They aren't spewing angrily about any of these issues. They love the very absurdity they witness all around them. On some level they love the people that perpetrate the absurdities. It is about teasing with the truth.

 The first time I wrote something funny I was not at all aware that I was being funny. I was writing my annual Christmas letter and was relating the story of how I had been charged by a buck while raking leaves that fall. I found out that I had been funny when my cousin later told me that she had nearly died laughing over my tale.

So how do you make your writing funny? I had to go back and look at the story I had told.

First of all you need to go beneath the surface. It isn't enough to say I was terrified. I had to explain how terrified I was in pretty specific terms -- and very human terms. I need to be showing you the part of me that you can identify with. So when I realize that this enormous buck is running across the street and lowering his head at me there were all sorts of things running through my head in the space of a few seconds. I was measuring the distance from me to the front door. Nope. I would be a bunch of little Laurie kabobs on his antlers before I could reach shelter. Could I defend myself? The wooden rake in my hand seemed so tiny compared to him and those antlers that I may as well trying to defend myself with a toothpick.

Second, it is HOW you say things. I didn't just say that I imagined being gored by the antlers. I added to the imagery with an off-beat comment about Laurie kabobs. It made light of a serious situation without dismissing how serious it was. Another part of the story was that he had been tracking a doe that had come running through the neighborhood just seconds before he had shown up. She had dashed between two homes before he came along so she was nowhere in sight. All he saw was me instead and I was not his type and that really ticked him off. Describing the eight point buck as a horny beast allowed me to employ a double entendre.

I was also able to be a bit self-effacing by adding that this was the sort of reaction I got from males -- now apparently of any species.

Third part is how you write. Short, zippy sentences keep the story moving quickly. Take little time describing the scene. How you tell the story should take care of that. I was raking leaves in my yard. That should conjure most of the setting -- grass, autumn, dry leaves crunching, a cool day. It is hard to be funny when you get too verbose. On the other hand, if I had been writing this into a romance I would have gone into the details to set a mood whereupon Ryan Reynolds (or George Clooney for my age group) could sweep in and rescue me from certain impalement. In my version, if either man had shown up, he would have caught his designer sweater in the branches of the wild plum tree and I would accidentally stab him in the eye with the rake.

Ultimately Bucky caught the scent of his lady love again and the valiant ungulate swain took off on her trail again. My knees gave way and I sat down where I was and tried to get my lungs working again. Now that I was safe again I was able to wish them well on their honeymoon.

My second comedy outing was trying to write a funny poem for a contest. I was wracking my brain for what was funny. The answer came to me in the bathroom (a.k.a., the thinking room) when I looked at myself in the mirror. Ah, yes, the bad hair day. So off I went describing how difficult my hair could be, including the fact that it seems to be deserting me. I was stumped for an ending though. I finally remembered a former coworker who used to threaten to shave her head every time she got stressed. Aha! My ending appeared out of the mists of time. I ended up winning third place for my first foray into humorous poetry:

Bad Hair Day (Attitude to Match)

(c) 1996 by Laurie Kay Olson

I have that hair, you know the kind,

It won't settle down and make up its mind.

It flies, it lumps, it bumps, it swirls,

It won't like flat, and it won't go in curls.

I'm getting to work late again this week,

But I hate to go out with hair that's not sleek.

I brush it, I spray it, I comb it and then -

Just one little sneeze and it's hopeless again.

I know that I'm lucky to have hair at all,

I don't have to shop for it down at the mall.

Be that as it may, I just want to yell!

Sometimes I think I'm in follicle hell!

I'm getting so mad, I'm in a huge snit -

I'll just shave my head and be done with it!

 This success led me to apply to write a humor column for the Colorado Daily Newspaper. For samples of my column, click here. The column on sports even garnered me my first piece of fan mail.

I find writing humor and comedy extremely rewarding. I love making people laugh. I love laughing at myself.

Humor is the best medicine and the doctor is IN(sane).