DAY 1:

Ok. I'd like to start by saying that I know how to laugh at myself. You can make fun of me all you want. I'm okay with that. I learned long ago that laughter is indeed the best medicine. Far too often we get ourselves in trouble because we take life, others, the world around us and whatever the day has handed us way too seriously. We fill our lives with anger, jealousy, insecurities and guilt instead of laughter. To what end does this get us? Not me buddy. I prefer to revel in the absurdity that is life because I know that every time I take myself too seriously, someone or something is around to knock me back down. Count on it. It's like when you were walking briskly home from school, king of the world, totally thinking you're the shit and then, BOOM!, without warning, you trip on a crack on the sidewalk. You regain your balance, look around and hope that no one saw that, shrug it off and pretend it never happened. Or laugh. Acknowledge that ok, I may come off like king of the world, but between me, myself, and I...we know I am a complete dork. Let's just hope nobody else finds out. Now you're harboring a secret. As you walk through the hallways of your job just like you did in high school, you find yourself once again looking out for cracks in the sidewalk to make sure you don't trip-to make sure nothing will happen to reveal to the world that, deep down inside (or perhaps bubbling right beneath the surface, you are, in fact, a complete dork.

Ah, but this is not the life for me.

I, sir, am a dork and I am proud. I wear it proudly and refuse to bite it back down as one more secret to have to carry around. I am a dork. My friends know it. It's why they enjoy logging onto their Facebook and spending the better part of the day joining in my absurdities. My friends know that I am not afraid to laugh at myself, and more importantly, the beauty of my circle of friends (and I mean the ones that have been around for 20+ years) is their ability to laugh at themselves in their own right.

Look, we have names for people who take themselves too seriously. Douchebags. Fanatics, fascists, zealots, assholes. These are the people who sue McDonald's because they spilled their own coffee on their own lap and then turned around and blamed others. These are the people who shoot down soccer players for turning a play that cost their country a win. These are the people who spraypaint temples and churches because they can't deal with the fact that other people are different. These are the people who are more concerned with what other people are doing. These are those guys who trip on the crack in the sidewalk and blame you. These people are dangerous.

But not my friends. My friends have never been too proud or too serious as not to acknowledge their own glorious dorkhood. We have often been accused of being irreverent, even obscene on many occasions. We have been accused of laughing too loud. We have been banned from places you may not yet have been lucky enough to even go to. We are a rag tag motley bunch. We are loud and raucous and frayed around the edges. We may not always be the crowd you want to be associated with On any given day, we may smell like booze or sex or fertilizer or baby vomit. We may question the government, God, our teachers or our parents. We may have some issues with authority here and there. We may have some attention deficit disorders. We may not always be pretty. But man, do we know how to laugh! Because among the few things we do take seriously is our friendships and our unalienable right to the pursuit of dorkiness and the God-given right to mock ourselves and the ridiculously absurd world around us.

Amen.