FREDDIE FUNKLE

     For as long as he could remember, whenever the mood would strike, Freddie Funkle had always found it both comforting and exhilarating to sing the same song to himself in the mirror after showering. Freddie would wipe the fog away and swoon as he serenaded the absurd image of his naked self staring back. It was an old Diana Ross song which went: "Do you know where you're going to? Do you like the things that life is showing you? Do you know? Do you know?" He would go on for some time, singing those same words over and over again. There were certainly more words to the song but Freddie did not know them nor did he care, for the words he sang were all that were needed to bring him back to his childhood when his older brother would follow him around the house, teasing him with the song. But for some reason, the singing of this song was absolutely intolerable to Freddie's wife who would actually become angry. "You sound like a fag!" she would say. Freddie once tried to explain to her that it was his bother's voice not Diana's which he was trying to replicate, but other than that, he was unable to explain or defend his desire to sing it any further. As a matter of fact, it wasn't until the two of them happened upon an infomercial late one night which was selling a collection of CDs called Songs Of The 70s that his wife believed that it was really an actual Diana Ross song and not just another thing he had simply made up. You see, he and his wife had a few failings with what they found humorous. For instance, his wife simply stared at him at the dinner table after hearing his recent idea for a comic strip called The Adventures Of Eunice The Eunuch. "You don't think that's funny?" he asked.
     "No," she said, "I don't."
     "But it's not really supposed to be funny, I mean, not like you're thinking. That's sort of the whole point! I mean, that's what's funny. Nothing happens to him. He eats, he poops, he goes to bed. He fills his car up with gas. He goes to work. He doesn't even realize he hates his work. His expression never changes. You do one of him just going to the post office. That's it, that's all that happens. It's like Seinfeld. You love Seinfeld! Only really, I mean nothing at all happens. You never even use an adjective ever! But really, it wouldn't even be about him, it would be about the world, the world that just sort of goes on around him which he's just totally oblivious to. Come on, you don't think that's funny?" His wife just went back to feeding their little boy who was being a little asshole about the pizza they had just sat down to eat, the very pizza he had said he wanted. "But it's too spicy!" screamed the boy.
     "Sweetheart," said his wife, "it's not spicy, I promise. It's pizza, you eat it all the time!"
     "I DON'T WANT IT!" cried his boy, kicking his highchair, "I DON'T LIKE THAT PIZZA! IT'S TOO SPICY!"
     "Stop that!" Freddie chimed in. "It's NOT spicy! You're the one that wanted pizza!"
     The boy covered his face and began to sob. "Okay, okay," said his wife. "That's not helping." At that moment, Freddie felt a wave of anxiety come over him. He was in his 40s now. He missed his brother and he missed himself, a self which more and more seemed only willing to surface on such seemingly insignificant occasions. Like when he sang the song or when he came up with the idea of Eunice The Eunuch. He knew it was a great idea, but he also knew he would never do anything with it. He felt hopeless, old and hopeless. He took a deep breath, folded the tip of his piece of pizza over, and bit into it. His boy was right, it WAS spicy, much more spicy than usual.