Jackie Papandrew -- Award-winning writer

Pull My Finger

Jackie papandrew — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:17:57 GMT

As a professional columnist who writes on matters of pressing national importance that frequently involve food-thieving dogs and sanity-stealing teenagers, I sometimes have to deal with difficult people. These people typically share a common trait - they openly admit to being men.

One such brazen fellow contacted me recently to let me know that he did not believe I actually write my columns, suggesting I must employ the services of a male ghostwriter.

"Your columns are too funny," he wrote, "and women aren't funny."

Then he added a strange caveat: "Or, if they are funny, they are ugly women. And you're not ugly."

Now, understand that this backhanded compliment came from a man probably in urgent need of an eye exam who was looking at a picture of me taken by a professional photographer using all the latest photo-enhancing techniques after I'd gone through a multi-step procedure involving makeup and numerous hair-styling appliances.

In other words, it was not representative of how I really look, especially first thing in the morning. Anyway, this reader's chauvinistic comments really got my goat. But after I'd calmed down, retrieved said goat and put him (or her) back in my mental barn, I started thinking about gender differences in the appreciation of humor. And I did a little research.

Turns out, it has been scientifically proven that men and women process "funny" differently. (Who knew?) Women were found to take some time to truly enjoy a comedic experience. Women like sharing narratives that create a bonding moment. If a woman has something funny to say, you should probably grab a seat because the punch line isn't coming for a while. Women laugh more at themselves, and they don't do crude. We'd never ask someone to pull our finger.

Men, on the other hand, like making fun of everyone. They like one-liners and sucker punches that come with a sting. They consider bodily noises an art form, from the perfect armpit fart to the loudest burp. Men are humor primitives -- man hears joke, man thinks, "Oh, a joke," man laughs because, well, it's a joke. They don't have the attention span or the desire to wait for the rib-tickling to begin.

This ability to be easily amused is a wonderful quality for members of your audience to have if you are in the business of making people laugh. But it renders the XY side of our species (AKA men) incapable of appreciating more sophisticated female funnies. That's why, as a professional humor columnist with a duty to tickle as many funny bones as possible, I often write about simple things.

It's also why, if one of my male readers actually laughs at one of my columns, he may be skeptical that it was written by a woman. And that is why men don't think women are funny. In the world of wit, we occupy different planes of existence.

I really am a girl, guys, and I really do write my own material. But in order to further my comedic career and appeal to the widest possible audience, I often try to think like a man. Pull my finger.

Visit www.jackiepapandrew.com to read more of Jackie's award-winning humor.

High-Maintenance Woman

Jackie papandrew — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:51:01 GMT

Occasionally, someone who no longer wants to be my friend will forward me one of those annoying emails, the ones that have been sent to every email address on earth and are even now probably making their way to computers in distant galaxies.

If you take the time to scroll through those never-ending messages, you'll often find jokes of questionable quality at the end. But recently, when I apparently had nothing else to do, I actually scrolled to the bottom of one of these forwarded follies and found a couple of pictures that were worth the trip.

One picture showed two simple push buttons, one labeled On and the other Off. The caption on this picture said Men.

The other picture showed dozens of buttons, knobs, levers and gauges in a dizzying and complicated array. This one was called - you guessed it - Women. The obvious implication was that women are a high-maintenance sector of our species.

I thought of that graphic depiction of the differences between the genders a few days later when my husband and I were having one of our regular conversations about access to the master bathroom.

Even after many years of marriage, we sometimes have these tense and high-decibel discussions because my mate refuses to accept the Rule of Triple Reciprocity that has been in place ever since Eve needed more time at the bathing brook than Adam.

The rule says that women get triple the time and space in the bathroom as men. A wise and reasonable man would resign himself to this timeless reality and add a second sink or, better yet, build a whole other bathroom. This would allow the wife of such an admirable man to enjoy her God-given right to leisurely bask in the boudoir.

An unwise and unreasonable man, a man whose picture is placed next to the word cheapskate in the dictionary, would insist on sticking with a solitary sink and shower, brutally throwing a monkey wrench into the convoluted process that is necessary to keep his wife looking like her lovely self.

Over the years, I've developed a highly effective, multi-step system for getting ready every morning. Each phase in this process is divided into a series of tasks, and each task is absolutely essential to achieving the goal of rendering me fit to face the world. Phase 1 is taking a shower.

While a man might think this is a simple procedure involving a bar of soap and minimal scrubbing, such a man would be wrong. A woman's shower ritual requires numerous wash cloths, loofah, pumice stone, fruity face soap, vitamin-enhanced shampoo, herbal-infused conditioner and, of course, honeysuckle shaving cream. A woman's shower, especially my shower, cannot be rushed.

Phase 2 - the after-shower - includes putting on various lotions and oils designed to soften, smooth and perfume my newly cleaned and conditioned body. That leads directly into Phase 3, when I momentarily leave the bathroom and enter my closet to decide what to wear. It's usually during this phase that my husband, employing guerilla warfare tactics, sneaks into the bathroom and jumps into the shower, rapidly steaming up the place and fogging the mirror.

This threatens to stall Phase 4 - the application of makeup - and usually leads me to lovingly suggest that my man's allotted 30 seconds have elapsed, and he should exit the premises without further delay.

That's when things get dicey. The timing between Phase 4 and Phase 5 -- the all-important, multi-appliance hair-styling step - is crucial. Any kind of unexpected setback, such as if my husband turns stubborn and stays in the shower, means that my hair will fail to achieve the desired fullness, and I will be cruelly condemned to a Bad Hair Day.

A Bad Hair Day wipes out all of my hard work and leaves me grouchy as a grizzly. I'm a high-maintenance mamma bear who needs her own bathroom. Maybe someday, I'll get it.

Visit www.jackiepapandrew.com to read more of Jackie's award-winning humor.

Dude, Where's My Son?

Jackie papandrew — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:29:57 GMT

My son recently turned 13, and the last traces of that sweet little boy who thought I hung the moon seem to have vanished. In his place is a strange, slouching creature with a pencil-thin mustache and adolescent angst oozing from every pore.

This extraterrestrial I once called flesh and blood, whose mood swings dwarf the Grand Canyon, seems intent on bungee jumping from that rickety bridge connecting a child with adulthood. And I think he plans on dragging his rapidly aging mother along for the ride.

A drastic language change was the first indication of alien infestation in my once-cherished offspring. The rosy-cheeked cherub who used to run to me, eyes shining with adoration and shouting "Mommy!" began to address me (and everyone else) as "Dude."

At 13 months, he was a sponge, joyfully soaking up new words, becoming more communicative every day. At 13 years, the hormones surging through his body have cut a swath through the speech center in his brain; his mouth, when it speaks at all, produces mere shrunken shreds of complete sentences apparently understood only by other members of his species.

"S'up" is a perfectly acceptable, all-purpose phrase in an adolescent's world.

"Mom, I love you," on the other hand, would burn his monosyllabic lips like acid and permanently corrupt his coolness.

Communication with this high-tech yet illiterate generation is fraught with frustration. My son, who can't seem to utter two intelligible sentences to me, airs his gripes through text messaging. Just the other day, a message flashed on my cell phone in fractured syntax designed to torture my English-major soul.

"i no u h8 me. i try so hard 2 b good. y r u mad @ me?"

Cave men scribbling on walls were more eloquent.

Then there's the alteration in appearance. While I'm desperately trying to avoid bags and sags, this long-haired Neanderthal living in my house embraces them as fashion. Wearing gravity-defying pants slung low across his scrawny backside, he looks just like a baby with an overly full diaper. When I helpfully pointed this out, I got another overwrought electronic missive that ended with the text message equivalent of a scream.

This modern means of communication does keep the house quiet.

Adolescent males seem to lose all capacity for living like civilized human beings. This means that my boy constantly raids the refrigerator but can't manage to close a door, that he can take 30-minute showers but never hang up a wet towel, that he stuffs freshly laundered clothes back into his hamper rather than putting them away. I find sticky cereal bowls in his closet because he was too lazy to return them to the kitchen, and the lunchbox he claimed he lost growing whole colonies of bacteria under his bed.

I now understand why some animals eat their young.

The child who begged me to read to him daily now rolls his eyes in disgust when I suggest we turn off the video games and pick up a book. The angel who proudly showed me off to his kindergarten classmates now pretends not to know the deranged woman waving to him in the middle school hallway. My fall from grace, seemingly overnight, has left me depressed, bewildered and prone to emotional excess.

"You could cut the apron strings without slicing through my heart, you know," I whimper in one of my calmer moments.

"Mom," he mumbles in that teenage tone of voice, "why can't you just act normal?"

Normal is, of course, a relative term. In about 10 years, I will magically return to normalcy as my pubescent boy turns into an adult. At least I hope I do. In the meantime, I'm going to hang on to those severed apron strings. I may need them to strangle him.

Visit www.jackiepapandrew.com to read more of Jackie's award-winning humor.

Airing My Dirty Laundry

Jackie papandrew — Fri, 16 May 2008 06:17:51 GMT

This nationally syndicated humor column by award-winning writer Jackie Papandrew dives into the laundry basket of life with hysterical tales of everyday insanity.

Check out a few recent columns here. And visit Jackie's website to read more.