I’ve discovered a remedy for taking myself too seriously, which I often do.  And that remedy is this: go and get some Bluegrass music.   Not that shit that passes for bluegrass today.  Not the country-rock-blues stuff.  But the breakdown music with banjoes that chug on like locomotives and fiddles that flay a hundred and ten miles an hour.  The kind without words.  Put the music on.  Then, square dance in front of your cats.  All by yourself.  Even if you don’t know how to square dance.  Just hop around like you do know.  Your cats won’t know the difference.

I tried this out one day while I was listening to blue grass while making a salmon salad and a spinach salad simultaneously.  I had to put down my dicing knife of course.  And then, I just started hopping around in my slippers.  My cats jumped up on the counter and started bobbing their heads along with my half-twist/half-techno-beat/half- square dance moves.  Okay, that’s three halves, so I must’ve been dancing awfully fast.  The four eyes of my felines were transfixed on the chugga chugga of my shoulders.  Their shoulders synched with mine, unintentionally doing this weird tango-twist kinda thing.

Then, if you find yourself still taking yourself and your problems too seriously, take off all your clothes, and square dance naked to the next song.  Close the blinds, by the way.  No, you’re not doing anything perverted in front of your cats.  Know why?  Because you’re not doing it for the purposes of sexual gratification.  I checked it out, in the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.  In order to suffer from zoophilia (which isn’t love of zoos, by the way), you have to have recurrent, intense sexual fantasies, urges or behaviors about the creatures that live in zoos.  You have to be attracted to elephants and polar bears. Plus, you have to have clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning as the result of your zoo fetish.  Although my social and occupational functioning is significantly impaired for other reasons, it’s not because I square dance naked in front of my cats.

Anyway, I guarantee that if you do this, you will no longer take yourself or your problems so damned seriously.  Another tip, though: do this by yourself.  Your friends and your coworkers wouldn’t react the same as your cats would if you danced naked in front of them, and they wouldn’t understand why you were doing it. And don’t try this in a zoo, or you’ll have to register for life.

© 2023 by Michael C. Just

Mike’s novel, The Dirt: The Journey of a Mystic Cowboy, is available in softcover or eBook formats through Amazon.

You can purchase the book through this website. Or go straight to amazon at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+dirt+journey+of+a+mystic+cowboy&crid=1S40Q4BXSUWJ6&sprefix=the+dirt%3A+journey+of+a+m%2Caps%2C180&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_23

Mike’s other titles, including The Crippy, The Mind Altar, and Canyon Calls, are available through this website or through Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002

Four of his short stories have recently been published online:

Lies, Ltd. has been published by The Mystery Tribune @ Lies, Ltd.: Literary Short Fiction by Michael C. Just (mysterytribune.com)

The Obligate Carnivore has been published by the Scarlet Leaf Review @ Category: MICHAEL JUST – SCARLET LEAF REVIEW

I See You, Too has been published by the 96th of October @ I See You, Too – 96th of October

Offload, a short story about a man who can heal any disease, is now live and can be read at The Worlds Within at Offload – The Worlds Within