When it’s not funny (and the joke’s on you)
MY FAVOURITE uncle, who lived in a retirement village, enjoyed serious conversations but didn’t have many because most of his friends were – to put it politely – a little vague. That is to be expected in a retirement village. I used to visit him on Sundays and he expected me to come armed with a topic for the day’s conversation. He always did the same. He hated the thought of the two of us sitting silently together trying desperately to think of something to say, which is what sometimes happens at such meetings. Before my visits I would glance at the newspaper headlines and pick a topic, or simply remember something I wanted to talk about.
Our Sunday afternoons were always far too short and I always came away feeling it had been time well spent.
We chatted about politics and history and places we’d been and interesting facts we’d learnt during the previous week. It was fun. I often think of those lively chats when I am in a restaurant and see couples sitting together and eating in glum silence – or attached to separate pairs of earplugs.
In one of my favourite eateries there’s a sign on the wall that says: “Great people talk about ideas. Ordinary people talk about things. Small people talk about other people.”
Then I go into waiting rooms where there are piles of magazines devoted entirely to the private lives of other people and I think there must be an awful lot of small people out there. A whole industry has grown up out of talking (and writing) about other people – mostly “celebrities” who seem to be celebrities for no other reason than that they are celebrities.
People actually pay money to read about who is sleeping with whom and what dress so-and-so wore to the opening of some obscure event. Oy! I think there’s a fourth category of people and their conversations: “Very, very small people tell each other jokes.”
I know several people who feel obliged to dump a joke on you every time they see you.
After a cheery greeting, they invariably launch into: “Did you hear the one about the man who walked into a bar with a snail on his head?”
(The trouble is, if you say, “Yes, I’ve heard it”, you more or less kill the rest of the conversation. So you smile and pretend you haven’t and wish you were somewhere else.)
Jokes can be amusing if they’re related to what is being talked about. On their own they are merely a sign that the person has nothing original to say.
I believe jokes are sometime used instead of conversation, rather than as part of it. And having said that, did you hear the Last Laugh today?
Last Laugh
Farming folk see things slightly differently to city people. An obituary notice in a small country newspaper read: “Farmer Jack Thompson died last week in a hunting accident. He is survived by his wife, two sons and a kudu bull.”