People laugh at different things

What IS a sense of humour, anyway?

by Robert LaFrance

Somebody told me this morning that I had ‘a wicked sense of humour’. I wasn’t sure whether to grin or grimace, but it seemed as if that person were giving me a compliment, as in: “That Bobby Hull sure had a wicked wrist shot.” I have been wrong before though. Once, in a bar in Flin Flon, Manitoba….but that’s another story.

A sense of humour is a delicate thing. In his essay ‘Humour As I See It’, Stephen Leacock said that, according to a friend, his humour was ‘a rather ingenious mixture of hyperbole and myosis’, which would pretty well explain it to me if I happened to know the meanings of those two words.

Reluctantly I turned to my dictionary, which wasn’t much help, so I asked the bartender. “Well Bob,” he said, polishing a wine glass (as if anybody ever drank wine at the club), “I know that hyper-bowl is a big bowl—that’s obvious—and myosis refers to the disease you get from drinking brook water in the spring. We call it ‘beaver fever’ in these parts. Maybe you add them together and get senseless humour.”

I have never had people accuse me of hyperbole and myosis, but people do say that I am able to find the funny sides of things—but only if they happen to OTHER people. If I slip on a banana peel—or an apple peel for that matter—and fall heavily on my keister, I am unlikely to break out into gales of laughter even though bystanders might. The old pie-in-the-face trick is only funny when somebody else’s face is the recipient of the whipped cream or meringue.

As Leacock said, I have as good a sense of humour as anybody else, but the fact is that everybody else says the same thing when talking about themselves. Even people so dour that they can’t force a smile at the jokes of Derek Edwards, John Wing or Don Rickles will insist that they have a good sense of humour. I can’t figure it out. I know people who haven’t cracked a smile since 1977 and who still say that.

They will readily admit they have no skill at sports, can’t dance worth beans, wouldn’t know J. S. Bach from Don Messer, couldn’t boil an egg without burning it, and have no more artistic skill than a gnat, but nobody will ever admit they have no sense of humour.

The ‘practical joker’ is probably the first person to brag about his sense of humour, but, as we know, there is nothing but malice behind practical jokes. People who place the proverbial banana peel on the sidewalk aren’t jokesters; they are felons. A broken hip would be the funniest result of all, unless the victim broke two hips and a wrist. That would be REALLY hilarious to some people.

It must have been two weeks ago now that someone pinned me in between the cans of fruit cocktail and boxes of pre-mixed pancakes in one of the grocery stores I frequent, and insisted on knowing the answer to the following question: “What’s the funniest thing you ever saw?”

It was either come up with an answer or become part of that store’s inventory, so I phrased it like this: “I was grocery shopping one day when a guy came up to me and asked me what was the funniest thing I ever saw.” I could see him looking a little wary. “I was in quite a rush, being about to visit a friend in the hospital, and I accidentally knocked down a whole shelf of (I looked behind me) fruit cocktail cans.” He started to edge away. “The cans rolled into the aisle and under his feet.” He was backing away quickly now. “He slipped on a couple of them and fell heavily into some bottles of pickles beets, breaking two of them with his face. I know it was wrong, but I couldn’t stop laughing.”

By this time he was running out in the parking lot where he slipped under the wheel of a tractor-trailer. I felt bad.

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