My Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

My Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

I hope you all are sitting down, because I have some unbelievable news. According to a poker buddy of mine, who heard it from his bowling teammate, who read it on a fortune cookie, I am on the short list for the Nobel Prize for Literature! It is all thanks to my hilarious, only moderately offensive satirical coloring book, I’m So Sick of White Guys – available at fine bookstores everywhere, as well as a few fly-by-night operations I’d suggest steering clear of.

While my endowment is not yet official, I figured I should work on my acceptance speech, so I’m fully prepared when I do get the call. To be honest, I did not see this coming. Oh, sure, I figured I’d eventually win a Pulitzer for my award-deserving humor writing. Heck, my piece called Don’t Let Your Dishwasher Destroy Your Marriage alone should have garnered me that trophy. But a Nobel? Now you’re making me blush.

I’ve long envisioned receiving that life-changing call from the Nobel Committee. I’ll admit, in my mind I was being honored for my accomplishments in a more popular category, such as physics or chemistry. If only I’d stayed awake during chemistry class or even audited a physics course. I blame my high school guidance counselor for leading me astray astray toward majoring in the Humanities.

What I really had my heart set on was the Peace Prize – the big enchilada. Talk about impressing my racquetball buddies! But the committee probably gained access to my pre-school transcript (I thought it was sealed) and learned of my recess scuffle with Cindy O’Connor. That undoubtedly took me out of contention. I maintain I was within my rights to pull her hair and put a frog in her lunchbox after she gave me a card with hearts drawn all over it. Yuck! But I digress.

Back to my acceptance speech. It’s merely a first draft, so I’m open to any suggestions to punch it up a bit.

“Dear Nobel Committee, friends, esteemed guests, View from the Bleachers readers, United Nations General Assembly, my new Bestie President Obama, the original cast of Glee, and Cindy O’Connor, whom I hereby formally forgive for giving me a mushy card. (more…)

My painful dark confession

My painful dark confession

I’ve decided to come out of the closet about my little dark secret. I’ve lived with it in quiet shame my entire life. Until now, nobody has known about it. Not even my kids. Will they respect me after they read my public confession? Will you?

I simply can’t hold this secret in any longer. I hope I won’t ruin my marriage. This is really hard to talk about. I am searching for the right words. Okay, here it comes……

I am ………… a lifelong……… slooooooow reeeeeeader.

I confess. My slow reading problem started in first grade. I would read a passage like this: See Dick. See Jane. See Spot. See Dick throw the ball. See Jane catch the ball. See Jane through the ball. See Spot catch the ball… and I’d think, Golly! (What do you want – I was in first grade.) This is going to take forever! Couldn’t they have shaved off five pages simply by stipulating in one concisely-worded sentence that the three of them were playing with the ball? Little did I know then that Dick and Jane were just the first chapter of my slow reading saga.

In seventh grade, our teacher at my all-boys school, Mr. Alanson, made us read Marjori Kinnan Rawling’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1938 novel The Yearling, about a young deer named Flag that becomes a family pet, then eventually dies, and everybody cries. Scientists should have stopped searching then and there for a cure for insomnia. I had discovered it. Took me forever to wade through this award-winningly boring book. [Suggestion to the author: Marjori, next time, spend a little more time on plot development and little less time describing a tattered leaf’s meandering journey down a gurgling creek.]

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