Lost Journal

Humor Column
by Tim Mollen
July 14, 2005

Welcome to Lost Journal

Journal Entry:  July 14, 2005 (age 36)

Welcome to the first of my weekly humor columns.  I’m grateful to the editors for the opportunity, and excited to get started.  My intention is to provide a smile to families at the breakfast table, a laugh to workers at the lunch counter, and a cage liner to birds and hamsters across our community.

In other words, this will not be a forum for serious discussion.  There’s plenty of room for that in the rest of the paper.  The impact of this column on your life will be somewhere between that of the Word Jumble and Prince Valiant.  If I can pack the journalistic wallop of say, Jeffy from The Family Circus, or Omar Sharif from the Bridge column, I will consider myself a success.

Each column will be an entry in my “Lost Journal.”  All my teachers, college professors, and mentors have stressed that journaling is essential to the craft of being a writer.  Despite the wisdom of their advice, I have never kept a journal.  But now I’m a professional writer, so I’m going to cheat and write one retroactively.  Each week, I will jump to another day in the period between my birth date of May 4, 1969 and the present.

Some columns will focus on growing up in the Binghamton area, which many of you will be able to identify with.  I rode the carousels.  I hung out at Aladdin’s Castle at the Oakdale Mall.  I roller-skated to Loverboy at Skate Estate.  I can sing all the words to the Brozzetti’s Pizza radio jingle.  I am you.

My work experiences alone will provide a wealth of tragicomic material.  From Press paperboy, to extremely bad waiter at the Olive Garden, to factory worker at IBM, I have worked in many of the places that you, too, have worked in, shopped in, and been part of ongoing litigation against.  Again, I am you, but with weaker references.

I also will address the least important issues and cultural developments of our day.  Like what it would be like if Tom Cruise and Brooke Shields were seated next to each other at the Oscars.  Or my idea for improving the home movie theatre experience with robots that talk during the movie, rustle popcorn bags, and take cell phone calls from their girlfriends.  Or the need for a television shopping channel specializing in decorative power tool cozies.

But most of all, my column will focus on the need to rid our culture of tiny, annoying ketchup packets.  I hope you’ll join me.

© 2005 Tim Mollen

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