My chief shortcoming

    My chief shortcoming as a human being is that I'm not one. My first priority is to turn a phrase nicely. My second is to get a laugh. In other words, first I'm a writer, second I'm a cutup. I'm a human being, oh, around 29th place or so. This comes up because I'm trying to put together a communique to a person who might read it as good news. The temptation is very high to spend days crafting a perfect missive, with allusions and puns and clever wordplay. And it occurs to me that if it's good news, it would be better to get it to her fast, and not cobble around with all that cleverness guff. If it isn't and just elicits a nastygram in return, well, it's probably better to get that over quicker, too. I'm sorry (sniff); I always cry a little bit when the little boy starts acting like a man. Even if he's 50.:)