BOBBY NOWAK

You’re at a party. Yes, you, the reader of this. You’re hobnobbing with people you know and people you don’t as one does at parties. Then as it always does a door opens. Not the door. A door. A window if it helps. That opening, that threshold you’re about to cross in conversation is… opportunity. The prize, laughter. Yes, you’ve successfully made a joke. Hopefully not a pun, but an actual joke. A joke that you can take home with you and hold in your mental joke pocket, because naturally each of us has a mental joke pocket. This joke is so good. So good it rouses the people who heard it and you’re confident they’ll take it home with them and spread it with fervor as though it were the good news of the bible. Not fake news though. When you fall asleep you replay it in your mind as you fall asleep. And at random points during the next day, week, and month you smile randomly cause you remember the joke, it’s effect, the people, the moment, the power, and how proud you were, as you should be.

Years pass by.

You barely remember the people or the occasion. The context or near anything for that matter. Your joke pocket has only so much RAM, so all you have access to is a picture. Just one quick image of the moment wherein you were at the height of social power. This moment, in reflection of that moment, only lasts for a few seconds, but your pride meter fills up as you crack a smile. This moment of reflection is fleeting, but well worth the space and time it took. You made a joke. People loved it. You loved it. And it was fucking awesome.

That’s my fuel.

A rephrasing of Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken

The last stanza:

I shall be telling this with a [smile]

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

[A joke was told, by me, and I-

Loved it.]

And that has made all the difference.