"R": Recalling, and Writing, the Funny Stuff

I started writing when I was around 8 or 9 years-old.  Poetry is the form most of my first words took, and short stories/essays/journals ran a close second.  Most everything I wrote was tinged with sadness, but as I got older, I longed to write comedy.  Listening to my Grandad tell funny stories, reading Erma Bombeck, remembering moments that made me laugh, those were things I loved to do, and I longed to put humor on paper.  Alas, it was never an easy task for me.

While in college a few years back, during a writing course, I decided to write about a funny incident I once experienced, but it was laborious work, and even my writing instructor knew it was not one of my better creations.  I edited and rewrote that story many times over the next couple of years, but it never felt right.  My daughter, who has a gift for the comedic, did me a great favor by editing the first part of the story (mostly slash and burn of the extraneous verbiage), and then telling me to reread some Vonnegut, to remind myself how good comedy flows.
 
I am going to copy the finally-finished draft of that story, entitled "Ink," here today.  All those years of revisions have culminated in an acceptable story for me.  As I finish this year's A-Z Blog Challenge on April 30th, I am about to embark on the task of taking an oft-told family tale and making it into a humorous short story.  "The BB Gun Incident" is by far the funniest thing I ever saw, and I want to do it proper justice.  I hope my muse will gear up for some humor.

In honor of the moments that make us laugh, here is "Ink":

                                                                       Ink
                                                                        by
                                                                 Judy S. Lentz

     So, I bought a printer. A combination deal, with copy and scan capabilities. I had never heard of the brand before, but it was on sale and I was proud of myself for finding such a steal. I got home, took the printer out of the box, and successfully hooked it up to my computer, without needing any help from my offspring. I was happy.
      Two weeks later, a window popped up on my computer screen, warning me that the black ink was low.
      “What the hell?” I muttered, as I opened the printer and looked inside to see if the cartridge was leaking. It was not. I had only used it five or six times since I bought it, so I went in search of someone to blame. I figured one of my kids had printed out the complete works of Kurt Vonnegut, or detailed instructions on how to build a backyard skate park. One of them had used it, once, for a two-page report. I decided the internal thing that gauges ink usage must be misfiring, and closed the warning box.
      The next time I printed something out, I noticed that a couple of lines were lighter than normal. I opened the printer, took out the black ink cartridge, shook it a few times, and put it back. A box popped up, asking me if I had replaced the old cartridge with a new one. I clicked “yes.” When I tried to print out a new page, another box popped up saying the black ink was empty, and the last half of the page did not show up at all. I changed the font color to red, reprinted the page, and a third box popped up, warning me that the color ink was low. I swore, and my cats looked up from their various napping spots. I grabbed my purse and headed for the store to buy more ink. On the way, I came to the conclusion that this printer must have been packaged for sale ages ago, then stored in a hot location, so most of the ink had evaporated.
      I found the electronics department and pinpointed the cartridges I needed, but they had been stocked in the wrong section. The price underneath them could not possibly be correct. It was almost twice the price of the printer.
      Oh. I get it.
      I reluctantly purchased the ink and drove home. As I put the cartridges into the printer, and wasted precious ink on three pages of alignment, I could feel my blood pressure rise.
      My kids decided to do all of their homework over the next couple of weeks, and I used the printer a few times myself, so I was not too surprised when the “Ink low” box popped up again. I was one step ahead of that box, though. While shopping for food at the dollar store (last month’s grocery budget went to ink), I discovered an ink refill kit. I am from a long line of hard-headed people who have made their own necessities (mostly grain alcohol) for many generations. I can certainly refill a little plastic ink cartridge.
      The instructions were vague, but I understood the basics: poke a hole in the cartridge with a heavy duty needle (not included in package), squeeze the ink from a palm-sized plastic bulb through a long, tiny tube into the cartridge, remove tube, cover the hole with a little black sticker (included), and voila, brand new ink cartridge!
      The hole was harder to make than I anticipated, and once I was done, there was a crack running about a half-an-inch from the hole, up the side of the cartridge. I figured I could use the extra stickers provided to patch that up.
      I attached the long, tiny tube to the bulb of ink, as directed, and inserted the tube into the cartridge. I started applying gentle pressure to the bulb. It did not seem to be expelling any ink, so I pulled it out of the cartridge and held it over the instructions. I gave the bulb a gentle squeeze, and nothing came out. I put the tube up to my eye to see if it was obstructed. It looked clear. I held the bulb over the instructions again, and squeezed harder. A black drop of ink, the size of a poppy seed, formed on the end of the tube. Okay, so I just needed to apply more pressure.
      I reinserted the tube into the cartridge, and started pressing harder. I steadied the cartridge between my knees, and used both hands to squeeze the bulb. A few minutes went by, and the bulb had only given up a fraction of a dram. I needed to think of a better way to apply pressure to the bulb. Then it hit me. An “Aha” moment.
      The cats in the room jumped up and left. They, along with my kids, have an uncanny ability to sense my “Aha” moments. They do not appreciate these moments for the flashes of brilliance they can be. I guess this is not totally unwarranted. After all, there was the limb-trimming incident. And the electrical-outlet-fixing incident. The sliding-van-door-repair incident. Oh, and the burner-cleaning incident (“Stop, drop and roll” works). But my cats were wrong this time, I just knew it.
      I placed the ink bulb in my mouth (after all, aren’t jaw muscles the strongest muscles in the body?), brought the cartridge up to the tube, and held the cartridge steady in my hands. I clamped down on the bulb with my mouth, and felt the ink start to flow into the cartridge. HA! Up yours, printer people!
      In the microsecond it took for the bulb seams to split, two thoughts flashed through my mind: First, I imagined my smile resembling Heath Ledger’s smile in “The Patriot,” after his girlfriend spiked his tea with ink. Second, for the first time in my life I wondered what ink was made out of, and how soon it would kill me.
      My mouth instinctively dropped open, the flayed bulb and bitter ink spilling down the front of my shirt, my pants, my shoes, the chair, the carpet. I sputtered and wretched, trying to get the potentially life-threatening substance out of my mouth as fast as possible. Ink sprayed on the computer screen, the desk, the wall, the chair one of my cats had just vacated. The sputtering sounds I made brought my son rushing from his room. He looked at me, he looked at the mess, he doubled over in hysterics. As he stumbled back to his room, leaving me to my fate, a cat peered around a corner. I imagined I could hear it giggling, too. Go ahead and laugh, you little ingrates, you'll all starve when I die of ink poisoning.
      It is two weeks later now. Most of the ink is gone from my belongings, and my teeth are almost white again. (I resisted the initial urge to gargle with bleach.) My breath smelled like blackboard cleaner for three straight days. I did not smile for the first week after the incident, whether to hide my teeth, or simply because I was pissed, I do not know. My tongue got back to normal first. My gums and enamel, not so much. The only other side effect I suffered was some discoloration that would have made a lab tech do a double-take at a UA.
      I went back to the store and bought a single cartridge of black ink, which was cheaper than the “money saving” combo pack that includes color. We now print everything in grayscale. In eight or nine months, I should have enough money saved to buy a printer that costs more, but is made by a company that has been around longer than the lifespan of a fruit fly. The ink for that printer is cheaper. I checked.