“I don’t laugh because I’m happy,” says Michael Pritchard, recipient of this year’s Heroes of Marin Lifetime Achievement Award. “I’m happy,” he says, “because I laugh.”

Pritchard, for the record, is actually laughing as he says this, wrapping up a story, this late February morning, in which he describes his day so far—a day that the rest of us would not find the least bit funny.

“I drove all the way down to Mountain View, for a gig at a middle school,” he says, “and when I got there they told me the gig is tomorrow, not today. So I wasted the trip. What could I do? I turned around and drove all the way home.”

And that’s when Pritchard takes his sad story and turns it inside out.

“It turned out to be a great thing,” he says, “because I have this really nice car—someone actually bought me a car because of all the driving I do in my work—so for one thing, it was a pleasure driving home. And then, once I was back home, since I had the day open, I could give the car to my kid for the rest of the day, to go look at wedding sites in Mendocino.

“The timing was impeccably good,” he confirms. “Except for my wife yelling at me for being an idiot.”

Click ‘Here‘ to read the full interview in the Pacific Sun