Maybe It's OK to Live in a Cartoon World

I've been told, before, that I live in a so-called "cartoon world" for being overly optimistic and over-accepting of the fact that "every little thing's gonna be alright".  My response to that was, "Ok."  I mean, what IS wrong with that?  At least in my cartoon world, I'm happy.  After all, have you ever seen Bugs Bunny having a crap day?  Didn't think so.  He's just content hanging out in his rabbit hole eating carrots and aggravating the mess out of Elmer.  Seriously, that doesn't seem like a legit punk-out, telling someone they live in a cartoon world. I just feel like, as humans, people spend a little too much time making each other miserable and not accepting one another just the way they are.  I can't help it, but I have to encourage and appreciate Witty/silly/funny things that some of my high school kids do in the place of stressing out about unneeded drama.  For example, the other day a few kids drew diagrams of the songs that we are singing for our concert.  For "Bad Romance"  they drew two stick figures holding hands and one saying "this sucks". haha.  For "Hey Soul Sister", they drew two stick figures with one saying "hey" and the other one wearing a t-shirt that said "my name is Soul Sister".  They drew several more, but those stuck out the most.  I just hope that these kids don't run into people later in life that criticize them for enjoying the simple things in life like drawing silly stick figures.  Who am I kidding, though?  They probably already have.  Sorry, I just don't see anything wrong with trying to look on the bright side when things get tough.  One of my favorite teachers from college, Wayne Jones, asked me a great question one day when I was freaking out about memorizing one of my Italian pieces.  He said, "Joanie, settle down.  How do you eat an Elephant?"  Being a little too over analytical of the question, I thought "Is this a trick question?  Umm...well, first you should probably kill it in a humane way, get a professional to process the meat, properly cook it, and hope that it tastes like chicken..."  I'm sure he could tell that I was having a hard time with the question, so he simply said, "One bite at a time".  Brilliant.  Yeah, the "real world" (in quotations because the real world doesn't magically begin existing when we reach a certain age; it's always here) throws huge obstacles at us every day.  We just have to take everything one step at a time instead of being overwhelmed by the big picture.  So, if you ever see me mouthing the words "one bite at a time" when I should be freaking out, it's ok because I'm just going to jump into my cartoon world and handle the situation like I want to.  If I do freak out, well, I have probably maxed-out my cartoon world privileges for the week.  Anybody who doesn't approve, well, they can just deal with it by using your own process.