Flip Wilson, Plato, carrots

Art of laughter lost on some

I had written to Aunt Maud Who was on a trip abroad When I heard she’d died of cramp Just too late to save the stamp. — “Waste” by Harry Graham

Iremember the first time I tried to be funny. I had a crush on a girl named Jackie, who sat next to me in my third-grade class. I quickly realized my small talk was getting me nowhere. One Sunday night, I watched the Ed Sullivan show on television, and a comedian named Flip Wilson did a running gag during which, as he told a story, he would punctuate it with the expression “Oh, yeah!” The next day, utilizing my fledgling mimicry skills, I tried my routine out on Jackie and success was immediate. Even months later, she would lean over with a smile and whisper in class, “Do that funny thing you do.” Oh, yeah!

Growing up, I never heard my dad tell a joke or a funny story. He was friendly, often smiling, and would chuckle at the comedians we would see on television, but no jokes, no one-liners, zip. After he died when I was 19 years old, I interviewed seven crew members of his B-17 bomber plane he flew on during World War II. To my complete surprise, they all told me he was the comic of the group, always telling funny one-liners as they would walk to the plane to fly another mission. To a man, they appreciated how his humor helped relieve the extreme stress they were under. When I asked my mother why my dad stopped being funny, she replied that everything changed when my older sister was born. “He felt like he had to buckle down and be a success,” she related. Later, while going through his index card file, I found several cards labeled, “Jokes for Sunday school,” that had a series of humorous asides he apparently used while teaching adult Sunday school class. It was nice to see you can’t keep a good man down.

Humor has always carried a negative assessment from most philosophers throughout the ages. Plato saw it as an emotion that overrides rational self-control and was often malicious. Although Aristotle thought wit had a place in conversation, he posited that laughter itself expressed scorn. The Greek Stoic teacher Epictetus advised, “Let not your laughter be loud, frequent or unrestrained.”

The Bible itself reinforces that negative to a degree in 2 Kings 2:23, describing God punishing some children with their death for mocking prophet Elijah for being bald. Philosophers like Hobbs and Descartes liken laughter to feelings of superiority over others. Later, Sigmund Freud would speculate that laughter was the release of nervous energy. Henri Bergson however called laughter “the momentary anesthesia of the heart.”

For me though, I enjoyed laughing at people’s jokes, but rarely could remember any to repeat to someone. But I kept trying.

The second time I tried to be funny was when my mother was hospitalized with pneumonia about 10 years ago. Sitting at her bedside with my wife, she was cranky and irritable, so I thought a little humor might lighten things. Time has banished my witty aside, but not her answer. Fixing me with a withering look, she thundered, “That’s not funny!” Undaunted, I made yet another feeble attempt at humor to which she loudly commanded, “Stop trying to be funny!” Objection noted.

The last time I tried to be funny was last week. As I was parking my car downtown, a younger friend started to cross the street in front of me, but seeing my car (but not me), he quickly stepped back on the sidewalk. After parking, I caught up with him and said that was my car he had inadvertently almost walked in front of. He earnestly apologized, so I replied with a humorous aside — or so I thought: “That’s OK, I was trying to hit you before you moved.” Fixing me with sad eyes he responded with a heart-felt, “Really?” Cue visions of my mother in that hospital room.

As for me, I’m not giving up. “The most wasted of all days is one without laughter” wrote e.e. cummings. That reminds me, did you hear what one snowman asked the other? “Hey, do you smell carrots?” Oh, yeah!