Thursday, May 4, 2006

Anti Yo Mama

This is basically a cut-n-paste of a comment I've made at www.Lit.org. where I post some of my writing. It's in response to a piece written by one writer who had recently visited live with another, and who was very touched by her friendship. So much so, that she wrote a poem about her. Which touched off a spate of semi-humorous, "Let's write poems about each other!" All in good fun, all for laughs and merriment.

But It reminded me of something my brother, John, and his good friends Zach and Abe did in highschool. Back then (and, I assume, now) it was a fun/cool thing for the guys to totally rag on each other. Call each other, and each others' mamas and girlfriends and teams and neighborhoods and whatever, all kinds of names. Huge, long, extended versions of the, "Oh, no! YOU SUCK so bad that you've got your own event horizon!" jokes back and forth.

Though, perhaps, they were jokes of a somewhat less astrophysical nature...

Anyway... one of them three pointed out one day that everybody ("everybody" meaning "including lots of people we look down on") did this "cutting on" their buddies. So... how much fun is that? Instead, they (and a few other of their friends) started doing the opposite. They did, "No... YOU'RE AMAZING!" bouts.

Every itteration of which would get more hyperbolic...

"You couldn't get fired from a job if the boss caught you in bed with his wife. He'd just thank you for helping to improve his gene pool. You're THAT AMAZING!"

"No... YOU'RE MORE AMAZING! Four-out-of-five regression therapy handwriting experts agree that the cross-bars on your lower-case 'Ts' indicate not only that you were Cleopatra in a former life... but that you TOTALLY ROCKED THE NILE!"

And on... and on. Sometimes, well... He's my kid brother, so I have to rag on him. John, if you're tuning in:

"You're SO AMAZING!!! When you were born in 1969, that event alone caused a realignment of the cosmos such that disco began to die. Were it not for your birth, we would still be dressed in lime green and dancing the Hustle. YOU'RE AMAZING!!!"

What they found out, was:

  1. It's more fun to do this ( good for you)

  2. There's more creativity involved (more good for you)

  3. It's funnier (to your buddies and the audience)

  4. You all end up feeling better when you're done (good for everyone)

  5. Nobody punches you in the teeth (good for teeth)

  6. Chicks dig it much more (good for you and the chicks)


All good reasons to give mad props to the AMAZING John, Abe and Zach.

No comments:

Post a Comment