July 11: Carrying On, Staying Positive, Happy Fairy Tale

"That remains to be seen.   But I am going to save you, and I want you to quiet down immediately.  You're carrying on in a childish way.  Stop your crying!  I can't stand hysterics."

Charlotte doesn't have too much patience for Wilbur's tears and wailing.  She's a pretty straight shooter.  When confronted by the fate of pigs on Zuckerman's farm, Charlotte doesn't lie to her friend.  Zuckerman plans to slaughter Wilbur once the snow starts flying.  Charlotte also knows that she has very little time to save his life.  The life of a spider is brief.  She describes it as "something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies."  Yet, she remains positive throughout the whole book.  She doesn't allow herself to wallow in self-pity.  Charlotte is an optimist.

I am not an optimist.  For those disciples who have been following my blog for a while, this confession does not come as a surprise.  What I am about to say will be more shocking.  For the next week, I'm going to try to remain positive.  I'm not going to bitch about my job or my prospects of full-time teaching at the university.  No griping about my finances or weight.  If I come across a bad poem, I will call it "precious" instead of revolting.  For one week, I will be staying positive.

I'm undertaking this little endeavor as an experiment to see if, by not expressing my natural negativity, I can possibly change my life in some way.  Maybe become a happier person.  And I also had someone tell me recently that my blog has become a little depressing.  So, expect nothing but rainbows and butterflies for the next seven days.

Once upon a time, a dentist named Jack lived in a kingdom of clowns.  Jack didn't like his life.  When he walked through the town square, all the clown citizens would take chattering teeth out of their pockets, point, and laugh at Jack.  At the local pub, Jack couldn't order a drink without the clown bartender joking, "Four out of five dentists surveyed recommend this ale."  When he went swimming at the beach, the clown lifeguard blew his whistle and shouted, "Look out!  Here comes Jack the Cavity Slayer!"

Jack kept getting more and more depressed.  He began to hate his job, started drinking during lunch, and one day drilled a clown patient's nose until it bled.  On his way home from the office that night, Jack started crying.  A clown mime came up and started pretending he was stuck in a box.  Jack punched the mime in the throat.  When he got home, Jack locked himself in his house and started sucking down nitrous oxide.

Jack started laughing.  He laughed and laughed.  He laughed so loud that a crowd of clown neighbors gathered outside his house to listen.  Jack laughed until he couldn't breathe.  He laughed until his sides felt like they were going to split open.  He laughed when his sides actually did split open.  Jack laughed until he died.

The clowns of the kingdom gave Jack a wonderful clown funeral, complete with whoopee cushions, hand buzzers, and buckets of confetti water.  Jack became known as the dentist who died laughing.

Moral of the story:  clowns suck.

I don't care what you say.  They're creepy.