Heart and Mind

We're All Comedians/Easy Jokes/Why People Who Like to Eat Nuts Can't Admit It

I've never known any professional comedians, but I often wonder if they'd get annoyed when they listened to all the other people in the world attempt to be funny. It's a natural tendency for many professionals—in all fields—to find it annoying when lay-people dabble around in their field with the approach of a weekend warrior, so to speak. Real psychologists probably find "armchair psychologists" sort of laughable. And pro-contractors probably think I'm a lightweight wanna-be even though I walk around so many weekends with a toolbelt on my waist, ripping down and rebuilding parts of my house.

Still, not everybody is willing to wield heavy power tools around the house, so even though I might be a weekend-warrior of home improvement, there are plenty of people who aren't. But that's why I specifically brought up comedians. After all, don't we ALL try to be part-time comedians?

You may instantly think, "Um...no, I don't think so," but we really all do. No, we're not standing up with a mic saying, "I just flew into town and boy are my arms tired." We're not all telling jokes, per se. But we're all looking to be funny when we can. When we can say something witty in the course of a conversation, we do so. We like making our friends laugh, don't we?

Everyone I have ever met tries to be funny when an opportunity for an amusing comment or witty remark surfaces. I do it, too. We all do. I've known some extremely funny people and some extremely un-funny people. I've known people who are very light hearted and people who are very serious. And I've known people scattered in between all of those extremes. Yet I've never known anyone who was completely immune to trying to be funny sometimes.

It makes sense. Laughing is the greatest natural high, and being witty is a majorly positive thing. It makes us feel good, it makes people around us feel good.

So when we see a spot to make an amusing remark, we do it.

So why do we think of some people as funny and others as not (or, more accurately, not remarkable in the humor department one way or another)? Delivery, of course, has a lot to do with it, but beyond that, it also largely comes down to what kind of observations the subject is able to make. Is it an easy joke or was it creative? Are the witty remarks that one makes based on the same "opportunities" that everyone tends to see and make? Or were you the only one in the conversation to recognize that there was a joke to be made?

We've all had the experience where we hear someone make a comment that offers us an easy "in" for a witty line, and, inevitably, it's so easy that three other people in the group all make the same comment at the same time. If it was that easy of a joke, it's usually not that funny. I hate when I make those un-funny quips. I usually regret them right after they come out of my mouth and I think to myself, "You ass! You shouldn't have taken the easy bait." (My blog-reading friends are probably going to laugh at this the next time it happens—with them or me—because it surely will continue to happen.)

Quick story here on another subject that could be sort of analogous to what we're talking about:

When I was in elementary school, one teacher complained to my mother that I wasn't participating enough in class, and then she said, "Ironically, he has no interest in answering questions in class that are easy and that he certainly knows. The only time he speaks up is when the question is challenging or when there aren't a lot of other students with their hands raised, ready to volunteer the answer." My mother relayed this feedback to me and, at the time, I didn't see anything wrong with it. I said to her, "Well...yeah, that's exactly what I do. Why would I want to say anything when it's that easy?" My point was that I wasn't about to jump in with everyone else to help out the class' cause by spelling "C-A-T" or something simplistic like that anyone else could handle. There was no thrill in that for me. But if I could come through on something tougher—deliver the big hit and not the routine batting-practice pop-up—than that was much more interesting for me and maybe made it worth my while to raise my hand and stop doodling in my notebook.

Well, I don't think of myself as all that funny, try as though I may at times. But I find other people funny. Who? Well, I didn't think the people who were jumping in at "C-A-T" were necessarily all that gifted, intelligence-wise, because they could peddle the easy answer, and the same holds true with people who really make me laugh. The truly funny people are the ones who consistently say the funny jokes that don't come easily. The ones who make the same jokes that everyone else says are just average-funny.

Well, you wouldn't necessarily believe it (or, on second thought, maybe you would), but the initial thought process that spawned this blog entry was only loosely related to what this blog has become. I was thinking during my car ride to work about how annoying it is when some people turn everything into a sexual reference. Doesn't that get annoying sometimes? I was thinking about how there are times when I have to carefully word my sentences into awkward phrases to avoid saying something that someone will make a sexual joke out of. And even that was a tangental thought.

I had been actually thinking about how I and everyone else really doesn't know shit about how stuff works. Oh, we think we do...but we don't. Take something as simple as water. Yeah, we're smart, educated people, and we know all about H20 and the little Lincoln Log models with the two big balls and the little ball and how two are hydrogen and one is oxygen... but do we really get how that works? How does that turn into the water we recognize in our tap? There's no semblance to Lincoln Logs and, anyway, what the hell is "oxygen?" "Oh, it's a gas." Yeah, and, really, what the hell is a gas besides some other scientific explanation that we don't really have a grasp on?

So I was thinking about that and when I heard myself say "two big balls" in my head, I started thinking about how I wouldn't be able to say that without everyone in the room smirking and making some kind of comment with a nod to testicles. But the most efficient path between to points is a straight line and sometimes the best way to say something is a way that requires you to talk about your two big balls. Or your smoked sausage. Or about handling the meat properly. Or grabbing onto the rack with both hands. It gets lame.

And that got me thinking about how it's annoying, but, better yet, why it is annoying when we do that. And it's annoying because those sexual references are usually easy jokes. They're not that funny. At least not anymore. They probably were in the 50s or something, or among a crowd of 12 year olds.

Personally, I am tired of having to be careful about how I use the word "come" in sentences. Truly, it's amazing how words (like come, balls, nuts, service, snatch, sack, screw, etc.) that were euphemisms to begin with (designed so you wouldn't have to say the real words) have become the words that are the norm and, therefore, the ones that now have to be avoided.

posted by Steve @ 10:36 AM