Kathryn Mayer • Writing Out Loud
I write stuff down. writer • humorist • activist
It’s hard to be funny when the world is falling apart, and while maybe Dave Chappelle and Steven Colbert and Samantha Bee can do it, I cannot. People read me for the funny, for the lighthearted jabs life gives us, how I interpret them then regurgitate life’s snippets from maybe not a point of view previously considered. All that stopped when the shooting paralyzed my community, almost a decade ago
(repost from 2010 essay. The thigh story still stands the test of time.) * Apparently, their phones, email and customer service call centers don’t work. Let me say this first. I like LOFT clothes. I like the fact that I can try something on and it fits. And I often look swell. And people that shop there aren’t saying words like “swell” quite yet, but neither are they sexting their
Written 3 years ago. This is old; and written mid-POTUS 45 term, pre-covid, but the fear was real. • I’d seen the signs but chose to ignore them. For years. I told myself: he’s just kidding around. He’s young. Undecided. Experimenting. He’ll figure it out. Maybe slightly confused. Trying new things – he’s just testing me. Seeing how much I can take. I can’t take much more. I’m not afraid
“When one door closes, another opens.” Seriously? Who says that? Everyone, or practically everyone. Except me. Fuck that shit. Who wrote that? Who said it first? Probably a middle-aged white man and he probably didn’t write it, but overheard a woman say it then repeated it as his own and whammo – memes, posters, bumper stickers, tik-toks, billboards, a goddamn bible. Probably got paid a bundle too, residual royalties, while
“GET YOUR FOOT OFF THE GODDAMN CLUTCH” His voice thunders, and he’s restrained in the passenger seat not by a seatbelt, but by gigantic dad hands braced against the dashboard, like he could bench press the car up the hill through sheer will, while I struggled behind the steering wheel of a shit brown Datsun hatchback, jerking up the steep dirt road like a roller coaster lurching toward a peak
Back seat of the shit-brown Datsun pickup, squeezed in where groceries, chainsaws, or dogs should go, not children, tiny fingers wrapped tight around the steel rods holding the headrest upfront, glimpses of the road from either above a sister’s head too small in the front only a ponytail tied with hard plastic marble-sized fasteners, reaching above the back of the seat, or perhaps, I’d be bumping and weaving, a bobblehead
Forget magicians, ponies or face-painting. Nothing says happy birthday like a foul-mouthed grandpa driving a fully loaded, shiny black, fast, ultra-performance two-seater completely un-child-friendly Chevrolet Corvette convertible. When my kids were small, this was how we did birthdays. Everyone wanted an invite. We heard it before we saw it. Like fireworks in reverse — engine roaring to make a grand entrance, the Corvette rounded the bend toward the house, Grandpa
Like the sheep we are encouraged to be, we head to the basement for fellowship after the memorial service for my Future Farmer of America Father-in-Law, who was lucky enough to die weeks before covid lockdown, so friends, family, farmers, Methodists, teachers and students could gather around the crockpots to pay respect, share stories, and say good-bye. Church ladies hurry and worry about having enough creamer for the coffee, plates
An irreverent storyteller with a foul mouth and big heart, Kathryn Mayer (aka Kathy and/or Kate) is a writer, humorist, and (former) activist writing out loud with humor and grace about little life moments with big ripples, including the space between parenting and aging parents, social issues, angsty reflections of midlife, and, sigh, gun humpers. Still. Sometimes a big deal, sometimes not Mayer is a national award-winning columnist, according to the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, and her essays have been recognized as Voice of … Read More Here...
kate[at]kathrynmayer[dot]com
xo Kate