Enforced Secret Joy #11 - Winifred Inspired Haikus.

My best friend from home, Winifred, called me yesterday to check in and make sure there were no sharp objects near my wrists. Which is silly. I have fashioned all the kitchen knives into quite the fetching mobile over my bed, and I’m not dismantling it for ANYTHING. All it’ll take is one good tremor over 3.0 and I’m good to go, ha ha ha.

Winifred is pregnant with her first child, due in October, a fact that I haven’t necessarily wrapped my head around. Small children are things your siblings produce, not people you went through 12 years of primary schooling with.

Winifred said her escape from life is a booze fueled marathon of old Ab Fab episodes (and I’m assuming she hasn’t done that since the little nugget of joy attached itself to her uterus) and she suggested that I do the same with Muppet Show episodes.

But when I think about it, one of the gazillion things that consistently cracked me up about life with Winifred was her penchant for haikus. Winifred can take any situation and roll out a haiku about it. There was the one about the high school courtyard statue. It was supposed to be a panther, but years of weather and plain bad craftsmanship turned it into a rusty blob, which inspired this Winifred ditty:

The courtyard statue
Is a panther they tell me
But I think it looks like a cow

That the last line flagrantly flaunted the Haiku Syllable Rule made it that much more hysterical to us.

Then there was the one she dreamed up while dieting for her wedding. The only line I can remember was the middle one:

The broccoli, she is raw

(Yes, broccoli would be three syllables in that example.)

So today’s Enforced Secret Joy post is in honor of Winifred and her impending bouncing baby bundle. Because nothing in life is so awful that you can’t make a hopefully witty haiku about it.

I don’t need a job.
God’s my way cool Co-Writer
Rent’s due; sell that script!

Dear Child Of Winnie
I got the goods on your mom
Pay me cash, it’s yours.

Oh dear McDreamy
Meredith is a duck face
I’m a great kisser

Who needs discernment
I dig abject confusion
Makes me feel secure

Does God talk to you?
How do you know that it’s Him?
Time to crack a beer.

Dear God, thank you for Winifred. Thank you for haikus. Thank you for the particular amusement that Winifred Haikus have brought me in the past, even if it’s one of those You Had To Be Seventeen And Be There kind of things. Thank you for laughter, thank you for memory. Thank you for leading me to the haiku exercise, as you can’t help but laugh in trying to do it. And please let Winifred’s bouncing bundle of joy grow up to be an illiterate football player, as I think that will cause her great angst and brilliant future haikus. KIDDING. Thank you for being All Knowing, including when I’m kidding in my prayers to You. Please clear all murderous thoughts from Winifred’s head, and have her deliver a precious baby that will amaze and astound her. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Amen.

I encourage everyone to post their own haikus in the comments section. You feel better, you really do. But you gotta be funny.