Aside from my good fortune in getting into print, something else I didn’t expect happened: Readers wrote and said I’d given them a good chuckle. No matter the subject, and despite my attempts at serious journalism, humor kept creeping into my columns.
I’d never considered myself a comedian, though repeatedly strangers told me that I looked like Carole Burnett or Vicki Lawrence. Could this have been some sort of omen? I’d been a huge fan of the late humorist Erma Bombeck’s work. But for me, writing humor had never been more than a hobby.
My humor blog had more or less evolved as a form of personal therapy. Suddenly I discovered I’d been writing stories that others found therapeutic too. While I’d been using observational humor to work through my own failures, foibles, and frustrations, I’d apparently helped others do the same. Maybe there was something more I was supposed to do with my knack for amusement.
Today, at age 54, I’ve won a national humor writing award and authored two books of humorous essays. My latest book, Deedee Divine’s Totally Skewed Guide to Life, was a 2008 ForeWord Book of the Year finalist.
My story demonstrates that we hold the power to reinvent ourselves every day. Three left turns effectively make a right turn. That’s how life is too. Several wrong turns can still manage to lead us exactly to the right place!
