 Briefly
Noted
By Martin Schultz
Am
I the only one laughing?
I am ready to
make a confession, though I don’t think it will startle many
readers. The fact is that I am an essentially humorless
individual. I desperately want to make people laugh, but they
always seem to go away disappointed.
I’ll give you a
perfect example. Some years ago, I was traveling in the desert of
a foreign country whose name I dare not mention, but if you
guessed Turkey, I would have to confirm your suspicion. There I
was, sleeping under the car as the morning sun blazed down. I
opened an eye, and before me sat a peasant astride a horse.
Absolutely silent, unmoving, his eyes fixed on my bedraggled
appearance and on the still-sleeping form of an Irish member of
the United Nations border patrol (the Irish are known for taking
pity on mad dogs and Englishmen).
Trying hard to disarm
what I perceived to be an increasingly frightening situation, I
cracked a couple of my best jokes. The horseman of the desert
ignored me. No guffaw, no belly laugh, no sliding off the horse
and falling about in the dirt. Of course, I didn’t take this
lying down, either. Unwilling to give up the challenge or my life,
I tried a joke or two in several foreign languages (Yiddish—copious
tears of laughter, followed usually by a violent reaction; Russian—sounds
better after several bottles of vodka; Welsh—no one jokes in
Welsh). I couldn’t even get a giggle out of the animal.
Endeavoring to save
both of us further embarrassment, he turned his horse around and
left the area. He probably didn’t even mention the incident to
his wife over a plate of shish kebab.
In my desperation to
win over the general population, I have used all the old
tried-and-true approaches that work effortlessly for other humor
professionals, including bribing four-year-olds, releasing small
quantities of laughing gas in confined spaces and, naturally,
seeding a crowd. Of course, in my case, the four-year-olds roll
their eyes, the laughing gas seems to induce feelings of
melancholy and the guy in the crowd I am paying to laugh stays
silent, along with the rest of this crowd of Midwest farmers.
Why can’t I get a
laugh? I’ve had timing lessons to help me learn to bring out the
punch line at the end of the joke. I’ve paid for breathing
lessons so I can build to the laugh line without choking. I’ve
had mnemonic lessons to enable me to remember the whole joke.
While friends are glued to prime time TV, I am glued to Bob Hope.
I can’t even get my
90-year-old mother-in-law to react. Of course, the way she looks
at me, or I should say through me, is her way of letting me know
that Judgment Day is coming.
So, maybe I should
give up on the humor thing and return to bringing out the surly-pussed,
mealy mouthed cynic that was always part of my nature.
“Hey, why did the
talk show host want to sign up for unemployment pay?
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Game
Night Traditions
