I don’t mean cubicles in your home; if push comes to shove, we can always take over a bathroom and stick a towel in our mouths to muffle sobs. I am talking about little soundproof, curtained or shuttered booths located in public places where we can stick in our rental quarters and have a place to just let our faces screw up and tears run down our checks . . . and out of our noses. Places where we can do the sobbing thing punctuated with snuffled massive intakes of air.

There are times when people are going through a difficult time or have an ongoing problem with which they cope for extended periods of time – sometimes years. And they really, really try to do the best they can, to find out all the things they can do to help the situation.

Often, it is only on a walk with the breeze swirling about your cheeks, tugging at your hair that you feel safe to think of that sadness outside of your home. Or maybe driving alone – and then, though, the road seems too short – you need more time to ease things back down before you come to your destination.

But what is really the worse unnecessary part of your world not being typical or something being especially painful has to do with people in jobs that are designed to help you, but they themselves are not in personalities that match the jobs. For all that you have tried, for all that you have grieved, there some of them are, sitting in offices and making judgments. Not listening to someone who has intimate knowledge of the situation, but assuming you are useless and incompetent and here’s the winner – bad and somehow responsible for the whole blasted thing.

You want to say, “You pompous, sanctimonious jerk, just shut up.” But that would just be egging them on because they have no idea that, hey, maybe they should consider the possibility that they have no idea what stresses are involved. They cannot entertain the thought that maybe, given a similar circumstance, they might have been blown away like kleenex in a wind.

You know this; you know that there are some people who feed off of being a paid voyeur and metaphorical Simon of American Idol and are in jobs that are supposed to provide help to people. You know that these “bad apples” are probably compensating for being bullied or ridiculed themselves. You know this.

You know this and still the situation hurts; still you are reduced to tears. The sobs come.

So I’m advocating crying booths . . . places where nature’s stress reliever can do its work. Where you can dry your eyes and just say, “Fie on them.”

I had this little fascination with the Waurika Rattlesnake Round-up, which was last weekend. And I expressed some thoughts about it and the Writers Workshop that was held the same weekend. But, of course, when it comes to rattlesnakes, I am here in northern Indiana, and just not within in easy traveling distance of the Waurika.

But I wondered: How did it go? According to the Waurika hometown paper, it was a big success and the concession stand actually could have sold twice as much snake snacks. And I guess no one was bitten.

I am thinking, though, of having a gummy worm round-up.

I wrote about this comic strip and these two guys a few days ago. Sunday, maybe? I don’t think I made this statement then: “The Argyle Sweater is funny.” I should have, because it is. At the time I was caught up in the idea that The Argyle Sweater, which for some reason I want to call The Argyle Sock, closely resembled The Far Side by Gary Larson.

Well, what is wrong with that? Nothing. Some critics have made the point that Hilburn occasionally has a joke that is similar to one Larson made; okay, are they implying that once an original thought occurs, no one can have an idea like that, even if they express it well, even if they make you . . . smile?

Gee, scientists, you can’t do gravity – Newton did it. Or how about this: A guy or gal has a brain tumor and a really good surgeon is able to delve deep and remove it and have the patient recover and be pretty normal. Do you send him away because he is doing something like an earlier surgeon did? Of course not. He can get the job done.

The Argyle Sweater gets the job done; Hilburn courts humor and lets it manifest itself in that off the wall way Larson did. Great, because for one thing, Larson isn’t doing it anymore in a daily strip. Personally, I like to have my brain regularly tickled by takes on situations that are far beyond knock-knock jokes; we should all utter a collective “Thank You, Mr. Hilburn, for showing us the thoughts you have when you let your mind hear a different drummer . . . well, in cases like this, maybe a different tuba.”

Oom, Oom Pah . . . Pah, Pah, Oom . . .

Oh, that’s sort of a complicated collective thought – so let’s just make the “Thank You” collective and you can customize the elaboration.