Now when I am aging fast (and glad of it because I got both my Covid shots), I often lose or at least misplace things. This morning I realized I have lost my sense of humor. After looking all over the house in the places I usually misplace my glasses and/or keys, I finally did the most sensible thing. I looked on the internet to find out why it’s gone, and where I might have left it.
Fortunately, I found a website for the International Society for Humor Studies. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything humorous on the website, unless you consider as funny several extremely serious studies of humor which apparently preclude the researchers from being funny.
I also found several sites on Sigmund Freud and humor. I am not making this up. When you are going back to the old Comedy-Meister himself, you know you are in for real hilarity. In 1905 Freud wrote a book called Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. (My synopsis of the book: If people are unconscious when you finish the joke, the punchline was too long or the punch was spiked too hard.)
Humor is tough to pin down because we don’t all have the same taste. Some people might think this is funny: Stressing the importance of a good vocabulary, the teacher told her young charges, “Use a word ten times, and it shall be yours for life.” From somewhere in the back of the room came a small male voice chanting, “Amanda, Amanda, Amanda, Amanda, Amanda, Amanda, Amanda, Amanda, Amanda, Amanda.” OK, not many people think it’s funny, and especially not Amanda, so perhaps that proves my point, whatever it was.
Oh I remember, the point is that school provides a setting where our sense of humor was shaped, so I am revisiting school jokes in my search for my lost or misplaced humor.
The little boy wasn’t getting good marks in school, even though he really liked the young woman who was his teacher. One day he tapped his teacher on the shoulder and said, “I don’t want to scare you, Miss Kneffelcamp, but my daddy says if I don’t get better grades, somebody is going to get a spanking.” There, was that funnier? No? Not for teachers, I suppose. OK, not for me either.
Could I have left my sense of humor someplace that I no longer want to go because of the Covid restrictions? The airlines! That could be it. Maybe I left it in the overhead rack the last time I got off a flight.
Before the pandemic, a man got on a plane in first class. The flight attendant brought in a parrot and put it on the seat next to him. The man asked the parrot, “What are you doing here?” The parrot said, “My owners are billionaires. They let me go wherever I want as long as I am back by Saturday night to entertain their guests.“
After the plane got into the air, the flight attendant started serving drinks. “Hey you, dumb and ugly,” the parrot shouted at the flight attendant, “what’s the matter with you? Can’t you see I need a drink here?” She hurried over to bring a drink to the parrot. The man said, “Pardon me, ma’am, I need a drink,” but she turned away and started serving others.
The parrot shouted at the woman again, “You with the huge thighs, don’t you know I need peanuts to go with my drink?” Once again, the attendant stopped what she was doing and hurried to bring the parrot a packet of peanuts. “Pardon me, ma’am,” the man started, but she rushed back down the aisle where she had been serving before.
“I get it,” exclaimed the man to the parrot. “The squeaky wheel gets the grease. I can do this.” The man shouted toward the busy flight attendant, “Hey you, hippo lady, waddle on up here and give me a drink and do it right now.” The flight attendant nearly ran up to the cockpit. A second later, the enormous co-pilot came out. With one hand he grabbed the parrot, and with the other he yanked the man out of his seat. The co-pilot hauled them down the aisle, opened the exit door of the plane, and threw them both out.
On the way down, the parrot said to the man, You’ve got a pretty bad mouth for a guy who can’t fly.“
Was that funnier? Not really? Hoo boy, I really have lost it. Dont worry. I’ll keep looking. Did I leave it at my last doctor’s appointment? That was my urologist. No, Pat will never approve of me finding urologist jokes. Sorry, no humor in this Friday Good News.
