The Intelligence Estimate

Dearest Blog Enthusiasts,

I come to you today with a heavy heart.

Occasionally, as a writer of humor you use friends, acquaintances and inanimate objects as a sounding board for punch lines or stories that you're working on. And often what happens is that the civilian will come up with a funnier idea than you will. And since they're a civilian with absolutely no social climbing instincts or performance skills, you write what THEY said instead of going off in your original, less funny direction. In college English this is called plagiarism. In comedy it is simply the price of doing business. However sometimes, in the pursuit of humor we forget the ones we tread upon to get to the punch line. And I have tread upon one Mr. Derrick Douglas.

In a blog entry a few days ago I was waxing idiotic about how I feared that I might be too happy to actually be funny. To remedy this I was going to join Columbia House to screw up my life. This is an idea that occurred to me on the train and before I got to my computer to write about it, Derrick called. Derrick is a friend of my wife's from college. He and his wife Amy live in Evanston. Derrick is a chemist, and is a quick wit...for a chemist. He said, "Hey, what's going on with you?" I mentioned the topic of my blog as if it were ordinary conversation. And Derrick suggested that I also attempt to get a rash in an embarrassing place. This is a theme that I expanded upon in my blog entry for that day. But the original idea was, in fact, Derrick's.

Derrick is no stranger to itchy rashes, nor to scratching himself in public, so he knows of what he speaks when he talks of rashes and the embarrassment of scratching them. Although, admittedly, his embarrassment has subsided over time and he now scratches himself whenever and wherever he pleases. Occasionally he will scratch other people completely unsolicitously and he is so well adjusted that he is not even embarrassed by their rebukes. Rebukes which have included slaps, drinks poured down his pants and more than one marriage proposal. But the fact remains; he was hurt by me taking credit for HIS joke. I'm sorry Derrick. I hope that this blog entry will heal the wound like a healing salve on poison ivy. Poison ivy in your butt crack.