And the winner is...ME!

It's true. While many of you were sleeping, I was winning a contest.

Author and blogger Frances Garrood, who lives in Wiltshire in the U.K., said yesterday she was "offering a small mystery prize for the best limerick on the subject of...writing limericks." Something snapped in my brain. Resolving to keep it clean, I tossed one off and submitted it:

A blogger whose real name is Bobby
Said, "Limerick writing's my hobby.
I don't know which is worse,
The smell of my verse
Or the people queued up in the lobby."

Frances loved it, so I submitted another one:

A limerick writer, Nan Tucket,
Put all of her works in a bucket.
But next to George Harrison
Hers paled in comparison;
'Twould be rude to divulge where she stuck it.

Frances said, "Even better! You're on a roll today, aren't you?"

I said, "I'm trying, Frances, I'm trying!" and Frances said, "Well, keep on, RWP. I'm enjoying them."

Whereupon she promptly retired for the night.

Not me. Four time zones to the west, I kept writing:

Though writing a limerick is easy,
Especially the type that are sleazy,
It's hard to refrain
From becoming profane
And a struggle to keep one's tone breezy.

...and writing:

The problem, dear reader, is textual.
Whether to be intellectual
And be thought a prude
Or succumb to the lewd
And write something thoroughly sexual.

...and writing:

A contest with limericks? Curses!
Composing those damnable verses
Fried my brain to a crisp,
"Call a doctor," I whisp-
ered, "and two psychiatric ward nurses."

...and then I went to bed too.

Today I awoke to discover that I had been named winner of the contest. Frances did not single out a particular limerick. I think I overwhelmed her with sheer volume.

I am retiring undefeated as the champion of writing clean limericks about writing limericks. And I am keeping an eye out (it's only an expression) for that small mystery prize.

P.S. - I hasten to add that limerick writing is not my hobby at all. I just said that in the first limerick because I needed something to rhyme with "Bobby". But the real champion appears to be Garrison Keillor of National Public Radio fame. Watch the last few minutes of his final News From Lake Wobegon (17:22) from last July's final Prairie Home Companion show with him as host.