Tickling Your Funny Bone

TICKLING YOUR FUNNY BONE

By Vicki Ellis Griffis

with help from Google, Bing, and Yahoo Searches

Including Annie Binns and others who stole the thoughts from my mind before I could think of them

(Oh, Yeah, In the Places Where You Laugh Hysterically, Those Were My Original Thoughts)

Children’s author EB White once said, “Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested, and the frog dies.” Never being one to shrink from a challenge, I set out to make humor interesting for you and to tickle your funny bone.

Seriously, as Annie Binns says, laughter has instantaneous health benefits including: relaxation, lowering your blood pressure, increasing your immune system response, and curing male pattern baldness. Well, the research is still out on that last part. . .but if it is true, some of you men need to laugh a lot more! Seriously, you cannot be serious about writing funny.

How does one write funny? Well, for starters, if you are right-handed, write with your left hand and vice versa. If you are ambidextrous, use your feet. Your writing will look so funny.

Next, you really need to come from slightly warped parents or have been such a parent. Clearly, if you've got completely normal parents (or were one) then writing funny is probably not your genre. But if you have the sort of parents who did skits to the song Paul and Paula—but your mom was Paul and your dad was Paula—in front of your whole high school, or a mother who was Polly Darton in a country western band—complete with enhancements—then you may be warped enough to see the humor in the macabre and even crazier to write about it. Come to think of it, my son and daughter should be best-selling authors!

You say, “Vicki, I just can’t write funny—it is just not how I roll—where would I start?”

Start with a piece of paper and pen, an app on your iPhone, a small recording device, or if necessary, the palm of your hand. If you hear laughter—perk up, listen, and start writing or typing or talking into your phone. I have used napkins. . .envelopes. . .my granddaughter’s diapers. . .or the cool side of my pillow when I was too lazy to get up.

Important: YOU WILL NOT REMEMBER it when you get home or wake up in the morning! It will be gone—Nada—Sayonara! Believe me. Many a funny moment has been consigned to oblivion because I thought I would remember—literally went in one thought and out the other.

Have you ever heard anything that gave you a big belly laugh? Borrow it! One of my favorite lines in one of my chapters in our soon to be released book Jest the Two of Us is Ma Katie saying, “If there is one thing that dills my pickle, it is. . . .” Perfect saying when I needed it. My mom used to say, “I will cloud up and rain all over you and make you walk home in the mud!” And, “I am fixing to get in your eyes and sting like onions and burn like pepper sauce.” Yep, used them! When you hear something like that, you will use it at one time or another. It is okay! Now you cannot take a whole column or a chunk of story from one that has already been written, (disregard this column on that advice), but hearing snippets or phrases is usable and valuable.

If you can laugh, you can make someone else laugh at the thing that made you laugh. Kind of like the song, “I was laughing back to see if you were laughing back to see if I was laughing back to see if you were laughing back at me! You were cute as you could be, standing laughing back at me, and it was plain to see that I’d enjoy your company!” Well, maybe that is a stretch in humor, but that is my point. Don’t try to force humor like I just did. It won’t be funny. . .well, maybe that was a little funny. . .or I giggled when I wrote it anyway.

You might say, “But, I write poetry | fiction | a blog | non-fiction | screenplays | on bathroom walls.” Perfect, Ann! Humor can make any piece of writing more. . .well. . .funny!

Don’t let fear of being funny hold you back when the subject is serious. Here’s an example from Robert Schimmel’s memoir Cancer on $5 a Day* (*Chemo Not Included)

This stupid hospital gown is riding up my tail. I try to pull it down, and it snaps right back up like a window shade. I cross my legs, and suddenly I’m Sharon Stone.

He truly had a serious subject and proved sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying.

Last, but certainly not least, when all else fails, laugh at yourself! And give your readers permission to laugh at you. Sammy and I have written many columns when we were out of ideas and were listening to each other talking to other people. When we heard a laugh, a column formed. A lot of our ideas start with, “Remember the time. . . .” and the memories have us laughing until beverages shoot out of our sinus orifices.

And we write it down, so we can make you and others laugh. Or at least that is what we pray for. And we know God has a sense of humor—because he made us zany people called WRITERS!

Coauthor of Jest the Two of Us, A Humorous Look at His and Her Columns

Available at 

http://www.amazon.com/Jest-Two-Us-Humorous-Columns-ebook/dp/B00YLWDARI/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1435623828&sr=1-1&keywords=Jest+the+Two+of+Us

Now in Kindle

 

NOW IN KINDLE! JEST THE TWO OF US!

 

http://www.amazon.com/Jest-Two-Us-Humorous-Columns/dp/1507560818

Jest the Two of Us - And they said it wouldn't last!

By Carol Ferguson

Herald-Banner Staff

When Sammy and Vicki Griffis got married, they were told it wouldn’t last.

“We were practically just babies; I was just out of the Army,” said Sammy, laughing.

“I was just about out of high school,” chimed in Vicki, adding, “I saw him and he didn’t have a chance.”

Now, 46 years later, they’re still married, and are celebrating their lives together with a new book titled “Jest the Two of Us: A Humorous Look at His and Her Columns.”

However the family includes more than “jest” two. There are son, Jeff; daughter, Stefani; and three grandchildren, Austin, Katelyn and Kylie.

The couple owned Celeste Insurance Agency, but their daughter now owns it. They are retired.

The writing began once their children were in school, said Vicki.

“People would come into the insurance office saying funny things, and I took them over to Dale Gibson who was running the Celeste Star,” she said. “I became the paper’s ‘Candid Reporter,’ with stories running every week. Then,

after the Star closed, I was asked to do ‘Reflections in the Mirror’ for the Wolfe City Mirror. Later, Lorane Mitchell started the Celeste Tribune (the city’s current semi-monthy paper) and asked me to write for it.”

Sammy came into the writing picture almost as a standin, initially, for his wife.

“I worked full-time for Proctor and Gamble in Dallas,” he said. “Sometimes her duties would overwhelm her, and periodically I would write a column for the Tribune for her when she didn’t have time. People started to ask when I would writeagain. I was putting in spins and quips for the Celeste Alumni Yahoo group, and they would say, ‘When are you going to write a column again?’” The upshot was that they each began doing columns for alternating issues of the Tribune, and the idea for combining their work in a book followed.

“I had started going to meetings of the Silver Leos writing group at Texas A&MCommerce,” said Vicki. “Dr. Fred Tarpley (the group’s mentor) encouraged me. This was going to be a Tarpleyproduced book, but then he got ill and I didn’t want to bother him with this. My aunt, Patricia Ann Vance, who has been a journalism teacher in the Houston area for 30 years, edited and formatted the book for us.”

The columns deal with amusing incidents in family life, the kind of stories that readers, and especially those who are parents or grandparents, can identify with. Naturally the two columnists each have their favorites among the stories they have written.

“My favorite column is the one titled ‘I Can Quit Anytime I Want To,’” said Vicki. It deals with shouting opinions at referees when children or grandchildren are involved in a school-sponsored game.

Sammy said his favorite of his own columns is “A Thing of Beauty.” While mowing the yard, he begins to muse about things that still remain in the yard — an old sandbox, the remnants of a tree house, the basketball backboard and goal (minus its net) — all connectedwith precious familymemories.

Vicki, who says she’s a latenightperson, does all of herwriting after everyone is asleep.

Sammy, on the other hand, explained,“I have to go in a room by myself with my mind set to write. If I try it with other stuff going on, I can’t.

That’s why I’m just a better writer than she is,” he added jokingly.

This kind of back-and-forth bantering permeates their work as well as their lives.

Actually their book is also a celebration of small-town life.

Sammy grew up in Celeste and graduated from high school there. Vicki went to Greenville High School for 11 years, but finished at Celeste.

“In a small town, if the kids are doing something wrong, neighbors and friends will tell you,” Sammy said. “And small schools have close to one-onone teaching and athletic programs. This all came home to me when our son, who was 14 at the time, was in a threewheeler wreck. He was in the hospital for seven weeks. Out of a town of about 700 people, about 200 came to visit him during that time. When someone is down, they help you up.”

Vicki said that when their children were growing up and living at home, “We always left the porch light on until everyone was home safely. We still leave the porch light on at night. It may sound silly, but it’s there to let family know that someone there loves them. Only when they’re visiting here and everyone’s home does it go out.”

Over the years she has been active in a variety of local organizations. She was president of PTA, and was named “Neighbor of the Year” for Celeste. She is still active in their church, Celeste United Methodist, where she is a Sunday school teacher and a lay leader.

“I’m married to an addictive volunteer,” said her husband. “When she volunteers, I’m a volunteer. She has said when she volunteers for something, my back starts hurting.”

Sammy is also active in their church and is now on the finance committee and a trustee, as well as being treasurer of the Masonic lodge and a former lodge Master.

The couple had a book-signing on May 30 to benefit the Celeste Public Library. As luck would have it, this was a Saturday morning when the clouds opened up and rain poured down for some time. Even so, a large group of friends carrying umbrellas came out to support them, they said.

Looking at their second career as published writers, Vicki said, “We want to encourage everyone to follow their dreams, whatever they are.”

“I’m paraphrasing Dear Abby when I say this, but go ahead and take a chance,” Sammy advised. “Don’t say you’re too old. Go ahead. You’ll get older whether you do anything or not.”“Jest the Two of Us” by Sammy and Vicki Griffis is available in both paperback and Kindle on amazon.com and copies are also at the Celeste Insurance Agency.

Vicki and Sammy Griffis have combined columns they wrote for the Celeste Tribune into a newly published book that focuses on family and small-town life.

Carol Ferguson / Herald-Banner

http://www.amazon.com/Jest-Two-Us-Humorous-Columns/dp/1507560818

We're Tripping!

The story began several months ago when my wife, Vicki, told me she wanted to go somewhere for our 40th wedding anniversary. 

Oh, great, I thought, she’s going to want to go to a movie and probably to the Saltgrass Steak House.

But I said, “Sure, anywhere you want to go is fine with me.”
I may have misspoken a little, because about an hour later, Vicki handed me about twenty pages of MapQuest printouts.

“What is this?” I asked.

“It’s our trip!” she exclaimed. “Here, let me show you! We’ll start by going to California to see our son. Jeff will love having us. From there, we will go up the Pacific coast to Washington to see your side of the family and then straight across to Wisconsin to see our nephew and niece. Of course, when we go through Oregon, I want to take a detour to see my friend in Sixes. After we leave Washington, I thought we would want to go to South Dakota to take a quick look at Mount Rushmore and drop by the Mall of America in Minnesota. It will be way fun!”

“Yeah, it is way, alright. . .way out of the question,” I murmured as I flipped through the MapQuest pages.

To see who won this battle, read I'm Tripping by Sammy Griffis in Jest the Two of Us, in paperback or Kindle.

http://www.amazon.com/Jest-Two-Us-Humorous-Columns/dp/1507560818