Funny stuff

I recall being about 5th grade age and learning some of the names of the bones in the body. Big whoop, right? But then we got to the 'humerus' and discovered it had nothing to do with Topo Gigio and Ed Sullivan and everything to do with that prominent knob we call an elbow.

Walking through the house and smacking my elbow on some immovable object (like a marble countertop), my arm immediately reacted to the assault by doing what it does best. . .cutting and running like the coward that it is.

Tingly and strange nerve impulses raced along in a slalom of who gets to jangle her nerve endings first and I found myself wondering just why we call this episode with our elbow 'hitting our funny bone'.

Seldom is this actually amusing. And if you can remember laughing about it, then it had to have been someone else's arm that was tingly.

Having thought about that during the duration of my absent nerve responses, I wondered why it is that we laugh at misfortune unless it happens to us. Car wrecks, people breaking their trampolines mid-jump, diving boards snapping during a spring and people being hit in sensitive areas by projectiles seem to bring out the juvenile laughter in us all - again, unless it is us that is suffering. Then the people who are laughing are just being cruel.

What classifies funny?

Who gets to decide?

A classic line from Henny Youngman, a comedian of bygone days, was "Take my wife . . . please!", to which the audience would laugh both knowingly and appreciatively. Try saying that the next time you are MC'ing some seventh grade beauty walk or Cub Scout bake sale. I promise the crickets you hear chirping along in the silence won't even laugh. It's just too stale and too corny for our 'sophisticated palate'.

But some things never grow old. The commonalities of humor as it involves personal actions seems to be a neverending wellspring of humor that outlasts time. After all, stupid people exist in every generation. Who knows? You just might be one of them.

For several years, Redneck Humor was, by far, the number one source of fresh material. Everyone laughed along because we all could picture someone we knew who fit the bill. Madison Avenue couldn't even prevent a snicker, because even in their world was someone who was a Bubba. The only distinction between their Bubba and the ones around here was the fact that the ones hereabouts are actually willing to laugh at themselves. Yankee Bubbas get all defensive and mad like no one should point out their redneckiness to anyone else.

Some kinds of jokes are only funny in context. I can't imagine kids in this day and age thinking humor from the 1950's to be all that funny. They can't relate to it personally.

I guess that is why we tend to take our humor whereever we can find it. Everyone can relate to some element of our personal journey and we just have to find that common thread . . . and pull it.

By the way, did you hear the one about . . .