Huffing and Puffing Thoughts

On most days I enjoy some good laughs at school, and what I often find funniest are my own thoughts. Before school, when thoughts of inadequacy and downright dread are sometimes dashing around in my mind, I can occasionally see all those passionate, attention-seeking thoughts as though they are simply on a stage and I’m in the audience – and then I have to laugh at their silliness. It’s as if I don’t even know the thoughts, as though they’re strange actors swaggering around with their ridiculous self-importance. From this viewpoint, a thought like “I’m not sure I’m thoroughly prepared for 9A” becomes just an innocuous and silly player prancing in the theater of my mind. I also have a hearty laugh after school now and then, especially if I’m recalling a lesson that completely collapsed earlier in the day. When I see the thoughts that put that spindly lesson together, and how flimsy and unrealistic they were, I often laugh right out loud. The teacher next door might hear me and think I’ve just thought of a good joke, and she would be right, in a sense. The joke, so often, is my own thoughts, those puffed-up impostors who act as if they are awesome power brokers, but who are really just boyish actors huffing and puffing and playing their harmless roles. It’s fun to watch them and have a good laugh.