A Cry for Laughter

The only thing I really want anyone to think as they read my column is that something in it is funny. It doesn’t need to be “chuckle drolly to oneself” funny or even “obvious smile on the face” funny. I just want people to find the things I say amusing.
I have to admit I’d love to know I made someone spit their morning coffee across the breakfast table because they laughed so hard at something I wrote, which is the grown up equivalent of having milk come out your nose at the third grade table in the cafeteria because Tommy Belcher timed the hand-in-the-armpit noise perfectly with the P.E. teacher walking by.
I think I have always gravitated towards funny. Growing up my family laughed a lot. We would watch television together and when Tim Conway really got going on the Carol Burnett Show we would all laugh. When there were off-color jokes - which when I was a kid simply revolved around a subtle double entendre as opposed to now when the jokes are often only slightly less “adult” than a Lenny Bruce after midnight set, - anyway, when there was a grown up joke that I didn’t get I knew something about it was funny because my father’s stomach would make little up and down motions as he suppressed his laughter in front of the kids.
In my life there was no Bar Mitzvah to mark my passing into adulthood, nor any aboriginal ritual scarification to claim I was no longer a child. Which is good because if ritualistic scarification was what showed I had reached the age of independence I would still be living at home having my mother wash my socks because I am so not doing that. For me the validation for passing beyond childhood simply revolved around making adults laugh. I’m not talking about the laugh you get when you’re four and you mangle a knock knock joke beyond all recognition and everyone laughs because of the Salvador Dali surrealism of “Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Boo.” “Boo Who?” “Orange you glad I didn’t say banana!” I’m talking about a snappy turn of phrase which occurred in my own little brain at the opportune moment and everyone at the table genuinely laughed. That was my version of Rabbi Leibowitz saying “Now you are a man.”
This may explain a few things about my psyche. The first is probably the fact that I haven’t completely grown up. I wear Chuck Taylor high tops to work, I have Batman action figures on my desk, and I’d rather stick a pencil in my eye than fill out insurance forms. If I did stick a Ticonderoga #2 in my pupil I’d be filling out insurance forms all day for weeks, so I just grit my teeth and try to remember if my grandmother on my father’s side ever had high blood pressure or scurvy.
The other insight into my personality has to do with the fact I think I write what I write to make people like me (Pathetic? Maybe). Just like when I was little and getting my mom and dad to laugh validated me in my mind, making people laugh today helps me feel valuable. This is probably why the humor I prefer is not mean spirited. I would never be able to write material for Don Rickles.
I think the Mark Brothers are funny, but the Three Stooges aren’t. I think Bugs Bunny is funny, but Woody Woodpecker isn’t. I think making fun of powerful politicians is downright hysterical, but making fun of people who cannot fight back is reprehensible. To me humor should create, not tear down.
Laughter itself creates good things. It has been proven to have medicinally beneficial properties. The irrefutable source of Wikipedia (okay it is sorta refutable) says laughter has been shown to boost the body’s production of infection fighting antibodies. That is good. So if you laugh at my column you can send me five bucks and write it off as a medical expense. Two people happier, that’s positive.
On a final note, funny things are everywhere. Here is great example from a week ago. My oldest daughter and I were driving on a country road. There was a dead possum on the dirt shoulder. That is not intrinsically funny, but we made some comment about it might not be dead but just playing possum. That was slightly amusing. The real joke happened a couple days later. My daughter and I were driving down the same road and saw the same dead possum. My daughter said, “That possum has amazing work ethic.” Now that’s comedy.