Once More Into The Great Outdoors

In putting together a report for the T'ursday night club meeting of the Inquisitive Believers, I found myself staring at a stack of research papers assembled by "publish or perish" pariahs.

My report was supposed to summarise the thousands of subtle methods for 'bringing up baby"; in other words, how do we carefully prepare children during their formative years to optimise their performances as adult contributors to society, ensuring that we have a sufficient mix of scientists, doctors, lawyers, athletes, soldiers, sailors, pilots, mothers, fathers, alcoholics, schizophrenics and antisocial types to keep a modern civilisation going?

Some Internet news articles help, like the one on future outdoor scientists.

What about humourists, writers, comedians, philosophers and others who see the clouded, astigmatic lens through which others view life?

I'm stumped.  I'm at a standstill, a deadend.

I can't find the one paper I need to justify the various inspirational teaching methods to create those with the insight to be funny.

Without that paper, how can I create a parallel universe of atoms, molecules, politicians, musicians, dung beetles and street cleaners?

I mean, shouldn't the parallel universe contain all the same stuff ours does, but just gets skewed in places where we see straight-and-narrow roads here?

I think back to the time a career counselor suggested I be either a chemical engineer or a priest, based on a quadrant of plotted points derived from a set of questions I answered.  There wasn't a place on the test that stated, "Don't answer these questions facetiously."  Instead, it said to answer the questions to the best of your ability, based on what you currently believed.

I look up into the clear, blue sky and want to see rain but I don't, the ground dry despite my wishes.

Time's a wastin'.  Closer and closer the clock gets to the moment for my presentation and I don't have the missing puzzle piece my colleagues expect me to elaborate upon.

Shall I, as always, ditch the prepared teleprompter speech and talk from my mental notes extemporaneously, relying on my dry wit and reading of the crowd to elicit laughter and squeeze out tears like ghosts of tragicomedians past?

I am neither a professor nor just another pretty face.  I am plain ol' me, here for all to see, humbly walking the local shops and watching live sporting events anonymously.

I vaguely remember the speech patterns of my great-grandfather but I can fairly easily recall the speech patterns of all my grandparents.  None of them were Yale grads or Rhodes scholars.  Instead, they were my down-to-earth family, working in the local factory, teaching at the local schools, or working as a chief warrant officer for the Navy.  All of them raising children on low-scale salaries.

Happiness is what you make of the moment, not what you collect or buy to temporarily satisfy a never-satisfied craving.

But do we want happiness?  That's a question I can't answer because I'm always looking for the next gentle poke at our seriousness, knowing death (which I can't find funny) is never far away from any of us.

I don't have the research paper in hand that I wanted to reference, but I have a feeling I can talk about my experiences with tragedy to place in front of my colleagues the supposition that comedy and tragedy have been and always will be intricately linked.  If we want more funny people, let tragedies run their course and comic voices will rise up to help heal the pain.

Just as not everyone will become scientists or understand the results of scientific research, not everyone is cut out to be naturally funny or understand every joke.

Will I ever give myself complete permission to be myself, knowing that I sometimes offend those I wish not to offend?  Find the answer to that question and I have created the research paper for which I have searched in vain.

I grew up with the likes of Flip Wilson, Henry Gibson, Andy Griffith and Jerry Clower setting examples of what's funny.  There never were any purely scientific types who rode the comedy circuit, were there?

Are there?  Maybe not, because professional science practitioners compose such a small percentage of paying audiences, it would be a starving comic artist who could thrive on speaking at scientific gatherings.

Science just becomes another prop in the clown's box of general sight gags, I suppose.

Maybe.  Hmm... I think I'll title tonight's diarrhea of the mouth, "Parsimony - can you parse any money out of it?"