Humor and Me by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

Growing up, I was the serious one. I was the one who rarely got a joke and sometimes it was difficult to get me to laugh. I’m not saying I didn’t laugh at times, but on the whole, I was more on the side of explaining why the joke didn’t make sense or that it couldn’t ever happen instead of laughing with everyone else. And I detest puns.

These days, if someone employs a pun in their joke, I just glare at them. They are never funny and are often, well, immature.

Additionally, I’m not one to tell jokes. Or at least, I haven’t been in the past.

As a teenager, I was the butt of my father’s jokes and teasing because I always took everything so literally. (Now I know that I am on the spectrum, but back then I had no idea.)

Now, I’ve actually cracked jokes several times!

My favorite one to crack involves me asking someone if they “mind” doing some specific favor for me and when they respond, as most people do in this situation, “Sure.”

I counter with a dismayed, “You mind!”

I do this because well since I was asking if they minded doing this small thing for me, the correct response would be, “No I don’t mind,” if you are willing to do it, Not, “Sure.”

Saying Sure is actually saying that you do mind doing it, that you are unwilling to assist or help.

I’ve actually done that three or four times in the last month, which is a lot more fun then flatly pointing out they responded incorrectly, which frankly I’d have never done anyway. It used to be that I ignored this particular mistake. It’s only been just lately that’s I’ve started with the wisecracking comeback.

Right now, I would love for someone to come up to me and ask if my if I drink because I’m prepared to respond, “I drink all the time! See I even have a bottle of water right here with me.”

And I would be correct.

“Drink” is a verb meaning to ingest fluids. So, all human beings drink, even newborn babies drink! After all breast milk or formula are both liquids.

Just because society has attached a negative connotation to the word doesn’t mean that is the only meaning of it!

So, yes, I do drink all the time. In fact, I just refilled my water bottle.

Though even with those wisecracks I still don’t laugh a lot, and I have a coworker who seems to think it is his duty to make me laugh at least once a day.

He’s not always successful.

However, he is also claiming one instance that was not his doing. I mean he was trying to get me to laugh (he had a couple of our coworkers in stitches) but I didn’t laugh until another worker made a crack about my glaring at his inane puns.

Okay, that was funny, but he didn’t make me laugh, she did.

The point is that I do have a sense of humor. A weird one, but it does exist.

Of course, part of the problem is that I do take things so literally, but I’m not so sure that is the whole problem, after all, pointing out that, “Sure,” isn’t exactly the correct response to, “Would you mind,” isn’t something someone with a low IQ would do. And, as my coworkers point out all the time, I’m very smart.

I don’t always feel smart, but well, I have had my IQ tested. So that is official.

Actually, recently I came across one of those online quizzes that professed no one could pass it if they didn’t have an IQ of 160 or higher. Now I know what my IQ is, and it isn’t that high, but out of curiosity, I took the quiz.

I aced it. This means either they were mistaken as to how hard it was, or I’m smarter than that official IQ test showed me to be.

The thing is I was shocked to learn how high my IQ was way back then because I’d once taken a quiz in the Reader’s Digest which they said if you got a certain number of questions right, you were smart enough to join Mensa. I missed it by one question.

The worst part was when I discovered the answer to one of the mathematical questions, I smacked myself in the head because I should have known that!

Yeah, not smart. Even without that, I have always considered myself of only average intelligence, mostly because of the grades I managed to achieve, let alone that I’m such a slow reader, which goes to show that grades and reading speed does not indicate intelligence. Remember that as you write.

Happy writing everyone!