“Any strength carried to an extreme is a weakness.” A lesson my father taught me at a young age. Who thought he’d be right? Certainly not him.
When I started dating my wife, Cindy, I often wondered why she was attracted to me. I was very skinny and very pale so it certainly wasn’t my looks. It wasn’t money since we had the same job, same pay, same benefits. I was shy and mostly an introvert so, personality wasn’t high on the list; maybe my super cool plastic car? Probably not, so I had to ask her pointblank what exactly it was she saw in me.
I’ve asked this question a few times over our relationship and each time she’s given the same answer and each time she’d end the telling of her reason with the same ego inflating three-word-phrase every man wants to hear, “THAT…IS…HUGE!”. Now, if I were a lesser man I would just leave it at that but, no!
Sure in the past when I’d slip it out around other people I’d get a snicker or two, that was expected but mostly I was met with unsettled and bewildered stares and murmurings of my mental state. More and more I began to keep it to myself. I was still enjoying it privately of course, I could entertain myself for hours with it. But when I was given the boost in confidence and self-esteem by Cindy, I was really starting to put it out there, flaunting it at work, Christmas parties, weddings, funerals, grocery stores, picnics, childrens’ birthday parties, I was trying to stick it in anywhere it might fit and if it didn’t fit, I’d force it. To my surprise, people really seemed to be enjoying it and the more they enjoyed it the more it grew. Wielding it like a skilled swordsman with a jab here, a poke ther…….Oh my! Let’s back up there a second… If I had any dignity, I’d be mortified!
It seems I failed to fully enlighten you on why she actually fell in love with me. If I wasn’t already on some government watchlist I probably am now. To be clear, her exact words each time I asked were, “It’s your sense of humor, your ability to make me laugh, you don’t understand, that is huge!”
Well, Cindy presumably hit a goldmine there and so did I. Having been raised in a family whose collective sense of humor could only be described as witty, sarcastic, dark, light-hearted, cynical, dry, deadpan, in-your-face, subversive, improvisational, biting and down right buffoonery, I had it covered. We could pull humor out of just about any situation. Our family motto should be, “If Something Bad is Happening, Something Funny is Happening” only because “We Put the Fun in Funeral!” was already taken.
As I sordidly alluded to at the start, before I met Cindy, my humor went largely unrecognized. I’d make spectacular jokes and people would look at me wondering how I made it out of the house without my chaperone and my helmet. My deadpan expression while delivering hilarious witticisms lead them to believe that I was serious which further lead them to believe that I was crazy. Good Lord! I had gaslighted myself or whatever the reverse of gaslighting is. I had literally convinced everyone around me that I was likely insane. But I knew I wasn’t crazy, I was funny and people just didn’t get the humor…right?
Their loss. The madness just rolled off my tongue without giving a single thought as to how it might be received by others and frankly, I couldn’t have cared less. My humor, first and foremost, was for my own entertainment. Like that time in the fourth grade while on a field trip to a local pond. I was bored and throwing pebbles into the pond and a teacher saw that I had tuned out of the “Preserving Nature Lecture” and tried to make an example by yelling at me, “If everyone threw a pebble into the Grand Canyon it wouldn’t be here anymore!” and I quipped back, ‘If somebody threw you into the Grand Canyon you wouldn’t be here anymore’. I thought it was hilarious! Sadly, the teacher, the vice principal and the principal did not.
Although my timing and delivery had indeed been perfect, I clearly didn’t read the room, or the pond in this case. My first public comedy tour earned me a weeks worth of lunch detention where I had plenty of time to focus on what went wrong. An improvised joke turned maniacal.
Later I learned the joy of making others laugh, for one, my beautiful wife, Cindy. Sure it took a great deal of fine tuning and some adjustments to timing, delivery and, most importantly, knowing my audience. I made myself the punchline so as not to offend or embarrass others. The older I got, the easier it got and the easier it got, the further I took it. If a little funny is good then a lot of funny is better so extreme funny is, well in hindsight, lunacy.
Pulling laughter from others became more important than my self-respect. But the more laughter I got, the more the scale seemed to slide towards “extreme”. Like that incident when Cindy and I were working together and we made a traffic stop on a young girl for speeding. The girl began blubbering uncontrollably and Cindy was hell-bent on writing her a ticket regardless of how many tears were shed. I contacted the girl and asked why she was crying so much and after she explained I went back and told Cindy the girl’s father had just died, she came home and found his body lying on the floor and she was just returning from the hospital where she had to identify the body. For three days Cindy was torn up that she had written this poor girl a ticket and I just kept telling her how disgusted I was that she could be so heartless. I kept that joke running until I finally admitted to Cindy the girl was crying just because it was her third speeding ticket that week.
Cindy was furious, I was laughing hysterically. So cruel but, so funny and soooooooo I couldn’t joke at work anymore because Cindy realized she could never tell if I was serious or not!!? Well, that’s just crazy!
But, lessons sit idle until you’ve lived long enough to disregard their purpose and fall victim to your own ignorance. One of my Father’s greatest strengths is his humor. It was in fact one of, well, one reasons my mother fell in love with him. But she grows more and more weary of his jokes as the decades roll on. Laughter is slowly being replaced by eye-rolling and a common phrase, “I think you’re nuts!”. It seems he’s taken this particular strength to an extreme. I cautioned Cindy that she would someday grow weary of my humor…and then what? She assured me that would never happen. But, just a couple of decades into our marriage, I’m already starting to hear retorts instead of laughter and the ever horrific, “That one’s growing old, you need new material!”
I admit there are now a couple of repetitious jokes in my repertoire that I’m quite fond of. My favorite is when Cindy and I go out and she jumps in the passenger seat of the truck so, being aware of visual cues, I assume I’m driving. A mere three minutes into our trip as I’m barreling down our narrow dirt road she asks, “Do you want me to drive?” I always think that a better time to have this conversation would’ve been THREE AND A HALF MINUTES AGO! So, my reaction is the same every time: I slowly peel my eyes away from the road and stare at her without slowing down and raise my hands in the air and say, “Sure, go ahead, take the wheel!” From my side of the truck, this is absolutely side-splitting but apparently there’s no room for humor on her side, not with all the wide-eyed fear running through her as we continue carefree and hands free at break-neck speeds. This occurs several times a month and each time it’s “extremely” insanely funny…or just extremely insane?
Furthermore, having chickens, pigs, cows, two goofy dogs, children and my daily one man vaudeville act I’ve titled, “Just what in the hell was I thinking when I did that?”, there is certainly no shortage of new material. So I’ve come to the conclusion that I repeat certain jokes because I didn’t get the reaction I expected the first time and I will forever continue to repeat the joke until I get the desired response and then I remember Albert Einstein once said,”The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.” and then I realize………..maybe I’m not funny………..maybe I really am insane.
