Not Funny

I’m sorry to everyone who had high hopes that my blog would be a fantastic success or at least consistently worth reading or entertaining. Unfortunately, over the holidays, I woke up one morning and I was no longer funny. I think it was December 28^th, but I was at work that day so I don’t know if it happened then because I am never funny at work.

Upon returning home on the evening of December 28^th, I attempted to tell a joke to Oscar and Grace, my two miniature Dachshunds. What happened next shocked me to the core. Neither dog laughed at what I said. Oscar heard my voice, but the way he was looking at me communicated that not only was the joke not funny, but that he might not love me anymore. Grace, who is always good for at least a chuckle and an eye roll at my former humor, didn’t even raise her head. It was like I wasn’t even there, like she couldn’t understand me. Yet, when I asked if they wanted to go potty outside, they trotted over to the kitchen door, waited for me to open it and then relieved themselves in the backyard. So you know they understand English.

I made what I thought was a very funny remark about the day’s news to my wife. She asked me what I was talking about and said that she hadn’t listened to the news that day. I believe the joke attempt was around some kind of clever wordplay, of which my wife is a big fan when a comedy giant like Steve Martin or Alan Arkin does it. But after staying up that evening and painstakingly diagraming that joke several times (including a slow motion breakdown of it that I video recorded in my basement), and checking it against other funny humor models of the same type, I was able to determine again and again that the joke was not funny.

Was I out of new material? It sure seemed so. Over the next few days, I was bothered by the lack of response from everyone I attempted to ham it up with. So I quickly fell back on the large catalogs of jokes I have told over the years. I chose what I thought was one of my best jokes, prepackaged with set-up, clever punchline and surprise ending with a kicker joke at the end. I practiced telling it several times in my car and to a man on the elevator at work (he didn’t laugh because the joke wasn’t over when I got out on the fourth floor and he was going to the sixth floor, he was a software developer anyway and they are always terrified of me when I speak to them in the elevator).

When I got home that evening, I felt confident that the joke that worked so well before would make my wife laugh and promptly told my son to take the dogs outside and clean up the messes in the yard, so that my wife and I would have the uninterrupted 2.3 minutes needed to tell the joke and then fill the rest of the time with the appropriate amount of laughter. I sat my wife down in the dark brown chair so that she would be relaxed enough to listen but not completely relaxed and not be mentally alert for the details of the joke as I was absolutely sure would happen if she sat in the tan reclining chair.

I told the joke just as I had practiced a dozen times, getting the complex order of details correct and waiting the appropriate amount of beats to allow for what comedians call “timing.” The response was very disappointing. My wife looked at me and said, “You’ve told me that before. Why did you go to all this trouble to tell me this again?”

I explained that I chose that joke because she had thought it was funny before. She said it was very funny when I told it to her the first time but then got up and left the room. I had known that I had told it to her before and after she reminded me of this, I wondered if I hadn’t waited my usual five years in between retelling favorite jokes. I checked my records, and it turns out I had last told her that joke on July 10^th, 2006, meaning it was almost a full 5 and one half years in between the telling of the jokes! That is a full six months of “humor cushion”. SO WHY DIDN’T SHE LAUGH?!?!?!

Unfortunately, science cannot tell us much about where humor comes from or what makes a person funny. How I wished that I could simply go to the doctor, pay my outrageous co-pay and get a blood test to determine how to retain my witty, playful style. Instead, I was concerned that now my personality would be as drab and unappealing as the clothes that I usually wear. What would I do to stand out in a conversation? I have always relied on my sense of humor to “balance out” my terrible breath when speaking to someone at close range. I know it is unpleasant, but if I can give you a little chuckle during our close proximity communication, I figure your interaction with me wouldn’t be a complete loss. Now I wonder if every face to face conversation is just that: a complete loss.

The other day at the store, I saw a girl in a ballerina recital outfit buy 6 ready-to-eat corndogs and skip on down the street. I couldn’t think of one thing to say.

I saw a man IN a Target shopping cart holding a clean garment bag trying to get random cars to pull him around the parking lot. …Nothing came to mind.

I was behind a blind woman at the post office who was trying to mail a live duck to someone and I couldn’t connect any dots to create a humorous image. I can’t help but feel that if this had happened prior to December 28^th, 2011 we would all be having a tremendous laugh. Those situations are where jokes come from. I know! I used to craft them.

So THIS is the reason I haven’t been blogging for your amusement. I’m pretty sure you would not have been amused. I’m not going to turn this into a fitness blog or a comic book blog. We’re just going to have to see if I am able to crack wise soon… before I forget the password to upload material to this blog site.

I hope this isn’t what drove Hemingway to put a shotgun in his mouth. That guy used to be hysterical, and that’s the Damm truth.