Not Surprised
In junior high, one of my teachers gave us a questionnaire on the first week. One of the questions was about our future professional aspirations, and I believed becoming a ninja was a legitimate career path for me. So that’s what I wrote. Ninja.
Unsurprisingly, the teacher asked me to stay after class the next day.
“Norm, you wrote that you want to be a ninja?”
I nodded.
“Were you trying to be funny.”
“Um…”
The teacher could tell I was earnest—as naive as a kitten in a cobra pit—but earnest.
“Do you know any ninjas?” she asked.
“Leroy Green in The Last Dragon.”
“That’s a character, right? From a kung-fu movie?”
I’m pretty sure my expression conveyed something along the lines of potato-puh-totto.
“How much do you expect to earn,” she asked, “…as a ninja?” Great question. I hadn’t given salary much thought. To say nothing of medical, dental, 401k, professional development opportunities… Slowly, this teacher asked me enough questions until I realized the ninja vocation might work better as a fall-back career.
Not only was this teacher looking out for me in the long-term, I’m fairly certain she was also looking out for my immediate welfare. My junior high was rough. A few kids had gotten into knife fights, drive-by-shooting were threatened on several occasions, a riot ensued once, and low-level street gangs were definitely a thing. Had it gotten out that I wanted to be a ninja, there was a better-than-even chance that a future (or present) felon would have tested my complete lack of ninja skills.
This has been a theme in my life. I am unable to see myself. And when I think I do, I fail to realize that I’m looking in a not-so-funhouse mirror. It hasn’t been until someone wiser tells me so that I have a clear, crisp self-image.
On that note…
At 19, I enrolled at Orange Coast College. I took a novel writing workshop with Raymond Obstfeld. I felt like I pulled a bank heist getting into this class, but really, all I needed was a valid California ID and a check that didn’t bounce. Still, the thought of writing a novel among other creatives absolutely lit me up.
I took it seriously. I woke up and wrote on anything that was handy—composition books in my apartment, cheap napkins at the donut shop, the margins of Yellow Pages I had ripped out of public phone booths, everything that could be scribbled on was.
I’d type it up in the computer lab and submit for workshop. I was doing serious literary work.
At 19 years old.
I would be the wet dream of bookworms, librarians, and subscribers of The New Yorker, and I would say things like, “Well, it is my contention that blah blah blobbity blah something for the literary wiki-douche page…”
My name would be an exclamation point on the pantheon of American letters: Ernest Hemingway, James Baldwin, Flannery O’Connor… Norm Leonard.
In one particularly absurd moment of self-delusion, I remember looking at a pipe in a head shop, not the ones for weed but one of the more literary ones that connoted an austere, writerly mind at work. Again, I was 19.
At the end of the semester, Raymond held a contest. The entire class voted on each other’s manuscripts, an Academy Awards of works-in-progress: best character, best dialogue, best thriller, and on down the line. At last, Raymond called my name for an award, and he said, “Norm Leonard. Not surprised. Funniest.”
The class applauded, nodded, and generally behaved as if they had bestowed an honor upon me. I forced a smile and accepted the award. A large part of me, though, felt offended, insulted, scandalized. After all, I was performing serious literary toil. And I was reduced to funniest.
I played Raymond’s words over again in my head: “Norm Leonard. Not surprised. Funniest.”
Not surprised.
Did he know something I didn’t?
I had only known Raymond for a semester, but in that short time I realized this man had assembled a list I definitely wanted to echo:
Working writer of novels, scripts, comic books, essays, speeches—all at the highest levels
Husband with intelligent, beautiful wife and a marriage going the distance
Father who cultivates solid relationships with his kids
Mentor and teacher to thousands (probably tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands)
Fantastic pickup basketball player with a solid 3-point shot (but an abysmal post game—every hero needs a fatal flaw)
On top of all this, the guy is living to, like…I don’t know, but his birthday is probably going to be celebrated by Smucker’s on Good Morning America soon enough. Maybe I should pay attention.
I’ve known Raymond for about 25 years now, and those three words of encouragement—”Not surprised. Funniest.”—have always been in the back of my mind. I’ve written everything from screenplays and documentary voice overs to children’s picture books, podcasts, and essays, and I’m never happier than when I’m writing stuff that’s funny. Or at least trying to be funny.
The funny thing is, I might not have ever slipped on the banana peel of this joy if there wasn’t someone wiser than me—someone also generous and kind—to suggest a better way, a gentle nudge that says, “Hey, asshole, maybe go with what works and stop shopping for a pipe and tweed jackets with elbow patches.”
I read the writing above to my wife, and she said it sounded like a love letter, and I suppose it is. The people who keep us from becoming ninjas, or other things that we’re not, and Instead encourage us to become who we are—well, they deserve all the love.
On that note, check out Raymond’s Substack novel, The Hour Thief. Here’s the brief pitch: What if for one hour you could be as smart as Albert Einstein? Or as fierce as Bruce Lee? Or as fast as Jesse Owens? Or as strong as Sampson? But you could only pick one at a time, it only lasts an hour, and you can never pick that person again. What would you do with this ability?
That’s the question that faces sixteen-year-old Max Klein when the accidental deaths of his historian parents leave him with an ancient artifact that etches a disappearing and reappearing tattoo on his arm—a tattoo that allows him to conjure famous people from history.
Thanks for reading! If you want to do your part to keep All Kinds of Funny coming, please tell your friends, share, restack—it all helps.
And if you’re one for banter…
lol, I love this, also hi i'm new.
It’s a perfect love letter