Getting Comedy by Bonnie Le Hamilton

Sometimes I wish I had a sense of humor. Sometimes I wish I could get jokes easily and laugh all the time.

Other times I realize that I do have a sense of humor but I also have this problem with being literal.

You know, like people on the spectrum.

As I recall, my father was the worst at joking around. He was constantly teasing me because I was always and forever trying to explain why his joke didn’t make sense.

Then again, he more than once stared at me like something was wrong when I sat at the dinner table. And every time I stood and looked around wondering what was wrong. Once I was standing again, he’d say, “Since you’re up,” then he’d ask me to get something from the kitchen.

As often as he did it, you’d think I’d learn. I never did.

And I’m pretty sure I’m not his only child he did it to, but boy did he get me the most because I was that gullible.

But the big one was his jokes.

I still don’t get the elephant in the pajama’s idiocy. An elephant could never fit into a human’s pajamas. Elephants are too big to fit into even the largest man’s clothes. I mean really, just consider the numbers. The record for the largest human, in weight, is what 500, 600, or maybe 800 pounds? I have no idea, but I do know it's considerably under a ton. A full-grown elephant weights in above the ton mark and as someone with weight issues, I know twenty pounds makes a difference in how something fits, a hundred pounds would have the clothes either falling off a person or splitting seams, depending on which way the poundage went.

You try putting an elephant in an 800-pound man’s PJ’s and said PJ’s will be rags. I guarantee it. Meaning the joke makes no sense.

And if my memory was better, I’d remember more of my father’s inane jokes, but it doesn’t matter, I never got them.

Konnie, and frankly several of my friends, once insisted I needed to write a humorous story. Want to know how that’s going?

It’s not.

That story is stalled out and I seriously doubt I’ll get back to it. As far as I’m concerned it isn’t funny. Ironic maybe, but not funny. I don’t do funny.

And I have yet again become acquainted with someone who has decided it's his personal calling to get me to laugh.

His first attempt?

Puns.

Which got our coworkers to laugh at the glare I gave him. I don’t like puns. They are so inane! Heads up everyone, puns don’t work on me.

What does?

Well, the first real laugh he got out of me, wasn’t a joke. One of our coworkers had been sneezing a lot, and she said something on the lines of, “I wonder how many more times I’ll sneeze before the end of the day?”

The jokester responded, “564,” or some such random and large three-digit number.

Okay, I admit it, I cracked up. Not at the number he pulled out of his head, but at the very idea of anyone even presuming to predict how many times a single person would sneeze in about three hours’ time.

The next time he got a laugh out of me, and only a small one at that, he pretended to be Elmo asking us if we could count to three.

He’s pretty good at voices actually, but that wasn’t funny as much it was cute. At least he now knows not to try puns on me.

And honestly, it may also depend on the mood I’m in.

Case in point, sometimes I can watch Gilligan’s Island and laugh my head off, other times I can’t even stand the idea of watching Gilligan’s Island and all those inane antics. Then there was the one time I watched Gilligan’s Island and cried. But that was not long after Tom died.

I wasn’t thinking about how goofy Gilligan was, I was thinking about how much I missed Tom and how I wouldn’t have had those DVDs of all three seasons if not for Tom. They were a gift from him. To be honest, I’ve done the same thing about the three seasons of the original Star Trek, for the same reason even.

Though I have to admit it was Gilligan who got me through those first few months without Tom.

I realized I had adjusted to his loss when I stopped crying, stopped laughing, and finally found the show inane.

The thing is, I’ve watched it since then, several times, when I needed cheering up. Currently, I’m at the place where I find such comedy inane.

Me write comedy? Never!

Anyway, happy writing, everyone.