Big and Little Jokes

Toward the end of his life, Robert Frost tossed off this couplet "to God" for a student seminar he was teaching:

If you'll forgive my little jokes on thee,
Then I'll forgive your great big one on me.

Someone naturally asked what the great big joke was, and he said "Druther not say."

I don't know why I can't entirely achieve acting. It fascinates me and before I die I'd love to succeed at it. Something never quite clicks.

What makes it odd is that most of my life is an act. Nearly everything that most people think they see in me is a role, crafted to keep the recipient of the great big joke under wraps. Getting onto a stage and assuming another role should be fine. Certainly I did it daily for several of my historian years.

What is stranger still is that if someone says something that is derogatory to the role, all of me is offended, including that man behind the curtain. Contradictory, that. The role exists to keep the world off and, to some degree, exists to be ridiculed.

Could be a little joke on myself: druther not say.