#135 Nerd-a-potty

I saw something funny the other day. Not gut-blasting funny. Not even chortling funny. When, by the way, does a chortle escalate into a guffaw? Is there some physiological connection to humor? Maybe how far down the laugh starts indicates how funny something is? If it’s not that funny it’s kind of a snicker in the nose or a teehee in the mouth. Then it increases—going down the body—to a throat and neck-involved chortle. Then a diaphragm-engaged guffaw and finally something so gut-blasting funny you have to change your underwear.
Well, this thing wasn’t quite that funny. It was funny in a way like all my pieces are funny: Kind of an airy, cerebral, ironic, not-funny kind of funny. Rest assured, when you listen to Funny Guy on the Prowl your underwear is safe.
This van was driving down the highway. It was an older maxi-van, possibly with wings, and it appeared to be filled with bright orange-clad people. No, they weren’t clowns. My second guess was convicts. The whole thing looked like one of those prison road crews that most states have to be litter-picker-uppers. Then I remembered. During the summer in our state, we use honor students to do our litter-picker-upping. I mean, how else you gonna teach bookworms the value of dodging traffic? Can’t spend your whole life with your nose in a book Poindexter. Just kidding, my-child-is-an-honor-student-bumper-sticker parents. That was irony. I think it’s stupid to expose young people to the risk of idiot drivers, especially when libraries are closing on Sundays for lack of staff. Convicts on the roads, kids in the libraries. Case closed.
Be that as it may, I felt sorry for these kids. I mean, I was nerd, and I remember how self-conscious I felt at that age about anything—other than my class clowning—that drew attention to me. So here the poor schmucks are forced to dress in florescent day-glo orange jumpsuits, looking like some “Glamour Don’t” cross between a drunken duck hunter and Ronald McDonald on acid. Then they have to traipse around in front of god and everybody on the freaking freeway, picking up trash. Now that’s attention.
But it doesn’t stop there. Perched on the back of the van, on one of those little forklift tailgates they use for handicap vehicles, was a—you guessed it—portapotty. Apparently, to be lowered to the ground at some freeway shoulder location and to be used by said day-glo nerds when the time came to answer the call of nature.
Again, bad enough, going wee-wee or poo-poo while the wake from giant 18-wheelers whooshes by hard enough to tip you over is none too wonderful, but even worse, safety-conscious Department of Ecology has crowned the top of the Honey Bucket with a rotating strobe light like the road department puts on hazard signs.
Now I’m thinking, if I’m so shy I stand along the back wall during an entire high school dance, am I going to be happy to do my business on the side of the freeway in a freaking portapotty with a whirling yellow strobe light on top? NOT funny…
America, ya gotta love it.