On The Far Side of the Literary Debate

HUMOR | READING CAN BE ‘FUN’? (DUH!) MENTAL

Comic books as literature?

My children are all hilarious — so quick with witty comebacks. I can’t hold a light to any of them; they have the best sense of humor of anyone I know.

All of my children were in the gifted program at school, but none of them cared for literature like me. I sympathized because the two subjects I had to hold my nose to endure were Literature and History.

I deferred both subjects as long as I could when making my class selections.

When I started Nursing School, there was a nasty literature requirement on the course curriculum. Ugh. (Lip curl.)

However, being the creative person I am, I found a loophole!

I may have inadvertently enabled literary delinquency in my kids, and I still may be an accomplice. Years later, I surprised one of my grown children with a leather-bound set of : ‘The Far Side: The Complete Collection.’

I’ll never forget the day that I nearly wet myself laughing when I was cleaning the house and flipped through a few pages of one of the early collections.

Please don’t ask me why, but I got tickled and couldn’t stop laughing at that dog doing something so human-like.

Again, I have no idea why I was susceptible that day, but I howled in laughter.

“Yo Zeke. Got any Magazines?” is now shorthand to announce that someone being looked for is most likely in the reading room and probably will be for a while.’

I have to chuckle because my friend’s husband is notorious for being ‘indisposed’ for long periods. She says that when he appears to be MIA,,he looks for him, she often find him in the loo. I suspect he hides out there, trying to get caught up on a few more emails before his yard work. LOL

“Oh great, here we sit with un-opposable thumbs” is now something I say whenever there’s a ‘situation’ that will require a little time or creativity to resolve.

After my kids were grown, Blue Eyes and I raised a grandson from birth. He was also in the gifted program, but he became an avid reader right after being potty trained.

One day when he was probably eight or nine years old, we were book shopping at Barnes & Noble when I noticed an end cap labeled ‘Children’s Literature.”

I called him over to me and asked if he’d be interested in any books there.

On the table were children’s versions of books such as 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, The Chronicles of Narnia, War of The Worlds, Diary of Anne Frank, To Kill A Mockingbird, Little Women, The Hobbit, etc.

After finishing his verbal book report on ‘To Kill A Mockingbird”, I lowered my head and made my acquiescing ‘Oops, I’ve been busted’ grimace.

I then nodded my head in agreement, promptly turned on my heel, and walked over to join him in the comic books section.

~Sometimes you just gotta laugh.

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