HUMOR?

My Mom Died and I Found the First Humor Piece I Ever Wrote

See if you can pinpoint the exact moment it goes off the rails.

I’m on a cleaning spree to end all cleaning sprees. Not just my mom’s house — my house, the office, litter along the side of the road. You name it.

EVERYTHING MUST GO.

The bad thing about living with a hoarder is that they hang on to everything (eight identical pairs of house slippers, tags still on, purchased at the first, and probably last, Super K-Mart in America. Hundreds of used plastic take-out food containers. Enough Ziploc baggies and plastic wrap to last me the rest of my natural life. Five refrigerators — count ’em, five — working and non).

The good thing about living with a hoarder is that they hang on to everything (ooh, that’s where my diplomas got to. I mean, they’re not all in one place — why would they all be in one place? — but at least I found them. They seem… important?).

That’s how I came across both the infamous letter implying I’m adopted (sorry, busy avoiding that whole issue) and also the first humor piece I ever wrote, which was published in 1986 in The Miami Student (I guess that’s the best they could do title-wise), “the Oldest College Newspaper West of the Alleghenies.”