I Used to Be Funny

There was a time before I had children where I worked a real honest-to-goodness job in an office. Every day I would have a different funny story about something that happened to me – usually on the bus on the way in – and I had a backlog of funny anecdotes for every situation. If conversation centered around eyesight I could throw in a tale about that time that guy at the bus stop told me I was beautiful, before conceding that his opinion didn’t matter much as he only had one eye. When discussion moved to squirrels (as it does, right?), then there was that time my dogs each ran on either side of a tree to chase a squirrel and I met the middle of that tree with a vengeance.

Don’t be fooled by this innocent face. Squirrels are evil.

Flatware? Well, once I was at a party talking to someone famous and holding an empty plate and when I gestured with the plate and it flew out of my hand, and we both just sort of watched it, slow-motion, as it crashed to the ground a good 10 feet away (I’m an enthusiastic gesture-er). So you get the picture. I have always been full of funny anecdotes that legitimately happened to me because my life is ridiculous.

And then I became a mom. And I wasn’t getting out as much. No longer taking the bus, I have less crazies around me, and while kids are funny, they don’t provide quite the same anecdotes that a run-in with a homeless pervert might produce. Unless you want to hear about leaking milk ducts or that time I slipped on spit-up, I’ve got nothing nowadays.

Case in point: Our financial advisor stopped by with some documents for me to sign the other day. He’s a friendly guy and we were chatting at the table about some random topic, and I shared my most recent anecdote, about how I had told my son about what dust bunnies were, and then the next day he saw one and called it bunny rabbit fluff. I was laughing as I told it, because how hilarious is bunny rabbit fluff?

As it turns out, it is not hilarious at all. I was met with a dead stare. I mean, he couldn’t even muster a little chuckle. There was an awkward silence before the conversation turned to the documents at hand, and all I could think was, “That’s all I’ve got, man. That is the funniest thing that has happened to me all week.”

Maybe I should have told him about the milk ducts.

Bunny rabbit fluff. These fluffy  hair balls permanently exist in the corners of my house no matter how much I sweep because I own two dogs.