I’m no guru–trust me! I have sold a whale of a lot of print-and-ink books as well as ebooks online, but I’ve had some dufuss days as well. It’s therapeutic to look back and laugh at some of the things we’ve done in the past. Here are some of my faves.

Back in the early 1980’s I had just started teaching. We didn’t have any money and my wife Carolyn was working at Sears. We had only one automobile: an old rusted out Volkswagen hatchback. Some days I would drive and drop Carolyn off at work and some days she would do the same for me. On some days, one or the other or us would take the city bus to and from to work.

One Friday after school I walked two blocks down to the bus stop and rode home. Carolyn was already home and working on dinner. We ate, watched some TV, and went to bed. In the morning my wife got ready to drive to work and then asked me, “Hey Mike, where’s the car?”

“What?” I replied. “Where’s the car?” she said.

Oh sh*t, without thinking, I took the bus home form work yesterday–but I drove our car to work! It sat in the faculty parking lot overnight and now we’ve got no car! Yikes. It wasn’t very funny at the time, but later we got a good laugh out of it.

Then there was the time I was working in a Talented & Gifted program with some high school kids one summer. I had a group of for kids who all had red shirts saying Talented & Gifted on the backs. My shirt said “Talented & Gifted Instructor” on the back.

One afternoon I took them all to a little family grocery story to get some treats for the program-end party later that afternoon. Unfortunately, when we got out of my Jeep and entered the store–I locked my keys inside my vehicle. I had to borrow a coat hanger from the store owner and work on jimmying the lock open.

As I was working on the lock, with my students standing nearby–a guy came out of the store and stood looking at me. I glanced over at him and he said, “So you guys are all talented and gifted?” He chuckled and walked off.

Ya know, when you’re wearing a shirt that says “Talented & Gifted” and you’re standing there after locking your keys in the car–well, there is quite a bit of humor there. It would have made a great photo–good thing that guy didn’t have a camera.

It’s good to laugh at our silly selves once in a while–we get a lot too serious about life.

–Mike McMillan