So yesterday, I taught my first class at U.S.C. It's called "Writing Humor: Literary and Dramatic" and it's part of the school's Master of Professional Writing program. (The current semester is not yet listed on the school's website but will be shortly.)
Things began appropriately. I determined the right hour to leave my house and allow sufficient time…then got out to the garage and found my car battery was dead. Someone — I'm not mentioning any names because it might have been me — shut a rear car door on a seat belt so it didn't close all the way. I took a cab to and from U.S.C., musing how it was somehow appropriate that a class in Humor Writing was starting off that way.
After that, things went well. "My students" — there's a phrase I never thought I'd type — seem bright and eager to absorb whatever I can impart to them…though I'm thinking the most useful skill I may be able to impart is how to carry a picket sign.
I had a great cab driver on the way back. In L.A. for some reason, you can't phone a taxi company to pick you up on a street corner. They insist on an address. The way U.S.C. is laid out, there is no easy address where they could find me so I walked three blocks over to Jefferson and Figueroa where the famous car dealership, Felix Chevrolet, is located. I didn't go in. I just used their address when I phoned, then waited next to a big statue of Felix the Cat for a taxi to come get me.
The cab driver was a very old gentleman from Kenya who told me he'd gone off-duty when he heard the radio call that they were looking for someone to pick up outside Felix Chevrolet. "I signed back in to get you," he told me. "I love Felix, always have." As a tiny Kenyan, he said, he had a Felix the Cat shirt that he wore everywhere until it was so ragged that his Mama started insisting he give it up. He refused and refused up until the day it came out of the laundry in tatters. He said that sixty years after the fact, he still suspects sabotage on his mother's part.
I asked him if he'd ever seen a Felix cartoon. He said he didn't think so. I asked him if he'd ever read a Felix comic book. He said he didn't think so. I asked him what it was about Felix that made him so special. He said, "Felix always seems so happy. When things get me down, I just look at him and he makes me feel better." As good a reason as any, I'd say.