“Being able to laugh! That’s the golden secret
to life. We take ourselves so seriously,” answered my friend. At 78, he has much
wisdom to share. It may not be ‘new’, but it is tempered by the sheer endurance
of his own longevity. Overcoming several physical ailments, and the
irregularities and vagaries of the vicissitudes of an individual life, as he
has, my friend’s words are not delivered lightly; they arise out of the
wellspring of a life lived with keen observation.
One’s ability to encounter life’s history with humor
is one thing, but to release it during duress is quite another. (Abashed, we do
not like to undress.) In my novel (ADMISSION, a Story Born of Africa,) Adam
Broadford is not one to guffaw, nor to chuckle. His humor is confined to a
smirk, an intellectual enjoyment of predicament, an intentional play on words,
and sometimes even, a deliberate obfuscation. The subtlety is in the mind.
Although others may laugh at predicaments, Adam cannot easily give his humor reign.
He is always analyzing. Word-play is his favored laugh. (A nosey and disliked
teacher, named Mevrou Neusindruk, means Mrs. Nose-shove-in, ha!) Yet, as in Adam’s
story, not all word tapestries are woven with the same thread. Although flecks
of silvered humor in his writing may appear, here and there, it is a more
resilient material, overall, that sews up the course of his progress. His is
the sensibility of perpetually thinking about his thinking. If reaction is at
the point of having a funny-bone, response is the approbation of events. The
approval. We laugh at he who slips on the banana peel (especially if others
laugh too). We grow concerned if, having once slipped ourselves, we’ve cracked
our tail-bone.
Like using our hands, there are perhaps six deployments
to humor. Most obviously, the lewd, crude, and vulgar may be represented by the
thumb. Thickest of our digits; it often is the most useful. Second is the index
finger, that which pokes fun at others. Third is the middle finger, that which
is suggestive, explicit. Fourth is the implicit, the ring finger, circumscribed
humor, not readily recognized, until evidently deployed; (my friend, reading
this now, may chuckle at this recalling of his bizarre image of decapitating
pigeons; another reader may well shudder.) The fifth, the pinky, is humor that entails
wisdom, insight, care, compassion. Rare. And the sixth? In the unique lines and
craters of our palms, time worn and grooved into our individual psyches, lie
the experiences of our personal lives; a smile; a wink; a yoke (ha!) Some
things, indeed, are funny.
In order to get their laugh, comedians choose
those things common to the crowd. A friend, more personally, may choose something
esoteric; something we each know. An acquaintance may tell a joke: “You’re the
ugliest buffaloes I ever did see,” said the cowboy, and rode on. The one
buffalo turned to the others and said, “Was that a discouraging word?” … What?
You don’t know the song: “Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam, where the
deer and the antelope play! Where seldom is heard, a discouraging word, and the
clouds do not shame us, all day”? So...? Got you singing? (And yes, I do refer
to Jungian shadows by way of using ‘clouds’, indeed! Ha!)
Thing is, as one smiles into the eyes of others
with our laughter, we become connected, glued, made humble by the sharing, and
transported beyond age, race, religion, and division. Or not. Some humor is
sadistic. Some humor is too off colour. Some humor is far too dependent on
identification with specifics of language, ideology, place. Some humor is
esoteric, built up out of intellectual commonality. Some has its foundation in
wit, witticisms, and word-play. But that which tickles our collective funny
bone quite clearly needs be germane to all; commonality is the precursor to the
longevity of a joke. We know that. How else to laugh at the sheriff saying that
the cowboy is wanted for rustling! Why? Well, since he wears a paper hat, has a
paper gun, and even shoots paper bullets! (Rustling! Ha! Get it?) …..Oh! (ha! ha!)
In the laugh and the catching of another’s eyes
we are humbled by humor. Age, and distinctions of attainment, pedigree, race,
religion, and even sex can all disappear in the connection of jokes. It can.
But it seldom does. After all, to let go of all inhibition, one needs to
undress. Ugh!