Make ‘em Laugh, First

I can speak French. I can read French. But when it comes to translating a French cartoon or joke, I’m at a loss. I don’t find them funny.

“Never cook bacon naked,” my husband announced as he turned over the bacon, and it spat and splattered around the cooktop.

“Not today,” I replied, smiling. I flipped an omelet on the next eye. I spied his sleeve hovering above the grill and feared he was going to set himself on fire. Our dachshunds sat hunched below the stove, waiting patiently. When my husband turned away to get a plate, I bent over the grill, tripping on the dogs and nearly re-creating a Mrs. Doubtfire moment. “I can see how cooking breakfast can be hazardous to your health as one ages and gets forgetful and… more bosomy.”

“Johnny Carson. That’s who said that about not cooking bacon while naked.”

“So, it wasn’t original to you?”

“I just thought of it now as the bacon popped.”

“It’s funny and good advice.”

I got to thinking about humor and how the funny stuff is always based on some little truth, like when Erma Bombeck said: “Have you ever noticed the first suitcase off the conveyor belt never belongs to anyone?” People laugh when they recognize something they’ve seen or known or something that makes sense, but they’ve not thought of it in that way until the comic or the humorous writer points out the obvious.

I’ve read a sense of humor is genetic. Usually funny people beget funny people. Just like promiscuous people beget promiscuous people.

I asked my old man once if he thought this true since both Mom and he were funny, and I’ve been told I can be funny, at times. He shrugged. And then he said deadpan, “My folks weren’t funny.”

“Where then do you think you got your sense of humor, Dad?”

“New Jersey.”

“New Jersey made you funny?”

“Yeah, folks there have a developed sense of humor.”

“So, it’s place. It’s where you were born and raised that makes you funny. Nurture not nature?”

He could be on to something. It does seem as if our TV comedians come from the New York/New Jersey area, but then again Andy Griffith was awfully adroit at situational humor, and he was a Tar Heel. Erma came from Ohio, a housewife from Dayton, who turned the mundane into the hilarious. Midwest folks aren’t usually side splitters; yet, Johnny Carson was.

Certain ethnicities are known for being funnier than others. Mostly, I’m from German roots, and Germans aren’t famous for their sense of humor although they do laugh a lot and enjoy life. Maybe it’s the beer. The Brits think themselves cleverly funny, and granted they do sport funny hats and mismatched clothes. Some Americans are amused by the Anglo-Saxon understated type of humor. When I was in Britain, I noticed how many British tried out tongue-in-cheek jokes on Americans, which could be sort of snickering funny, but not really my cup of tea any more than Downton Abbey’s low-energy plots are my type of soap opera.

I can speak French. I can read French. But when it comes to translating a French cartoon or joke, I’m at a loss. I don’t find them funny. Maybe one must have some common gestalt type of understanding or field of experience to share their sense of humor. Maybe how one interprets funny is in the DNA of a group of folks or in their shared culture?

I’ve lived in the South since I was 18, and some of my Southern friends are funny, but often, they take me seriously when I am joking. I must not have the timing or the proper facial expression or the wording just right for them to realize I’m poking fun. When I poke fun at myself, they’ll rush to soothe me and prop me up. I don’t want to take the wind out of their Oprah-like, consoling ways or embarrass them by telling them I’m pretending; I’m just spoofing; I’m mocking myself. I don’t mean it. It’s called self-deprecating humor.

For instance, the other day I was at a tea, yeah, like a British tea, and we were talking about being grandmas and the differences nowadays raising children. I said how my daughter-in-law is a much better mom than I was. Looking anguished for me, they all gushed, “I’m sure that’s not true!” Then, they peered at me with pitying eyes.

And once I had their attention, I continued, “Yeah, I was a terrible mom. I let my kids watch TV all day long. They could eat as much candy as they collected after trick-or-treating all alone in strange neighborhoods; I let them ride bikes without helmets – even at night, and I spanked them every Tuesday… whether they needed it or not.”

I expected them to laugh at my punch line. Instead, they looked horrified! Then one older, genteel lady reached over for my hand and said, “You had four kids. I’m sure you did the best you could.”

Another said: “You used to volunteer in your kids’ classrooms. Remember? You were a good mother.” She tried to pump up my ego and reassure me I wasn’t a doppelganger for Mommy Dearest.

Now, how the heck could I tell this table of sincere, kind Southern women, I was only teasing, well … at least the part about spanking my children every Tuesday. (I’m sure a few Tuesdays got past me.)

Seriously. Maybe I’m not congenitally equipped to be a stand-up comic. And maybe at the tea, I failed the first rule of communication, which is Know your audience. Maybe my timing was off? Yet, I believe one must win folks over by using humor. If you get a person to laugh, you can get him to listen, and maybe you can get him or her to like you and better still maybe you can persuade him or her to your point of view.

My circuitous route in this essay hopefully got me to the take-away message: Use humor whenever you can. Make your audience smile, laugh, or outright hee-haw. Once you have their attention and you’ve put them in a conciliatory mood where they identify with what you’re saying, then the salesman in you can deliver your wares. You can sell them on your message.

You must be yourself. If you see the world a little at a-tilt, don’t deny your funny genes. Be you. If you’re witty or pranky or tongue-in -cheek funny, expose it. You don’t have to go along to get along if that means acting vanilla-bland boring. Remember Mark Twain’s famous words in The Mysterious Stranger: “Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.”