random
Random Musings: What is Funny?
Yeah, I know. It’s subjective. At the same time, I’ve often found myself perplexed by what some people find amusing. Something wrong with me? Or them? Or just different strokes?
When someone trips and falls, I don’t laugh … unless they’re laughing (because laughter is contagious) or they’re goofy and hammy as they get up.
Side story: My first year of teaching, I was trying to navigate down an aisle in my first period class when my foot caught on a backpack strap. Boom! Down to my hands and knees. (Not a total face-plant.) I laughed. My students freaked out wondering if I was okay, especially the very remorseful owner of the backpack. Those were good kids.
I’m not amused by the lewd, crude, and rude. It falls flat for me. This explains why I see very few so-called comedies.
Pranks where the goal is to humiliate the target? So not funny to me.
Lest you think I’m too saintly and need to get back to polishing my halo, I am a fan of sarcasm. But I try to be careful with how I use it, only engaging with people I know well enough. They need to know I’m being sarcastic and that I’d never mean it in a hurtful way.
Witty comebacks and good-natured verbal sparring can be very funny. Clever wordplay. Well-placed irony.
Often what I find funny is the unexpected, the things that come out of nowhere. Maybe that seems like a contradiction, because an algebra teacher getting her ankle ensnared by a wily backpack certainly qualifies as unexpected. Like I said, since I was laughing, I really wouldn’t have minded if the kids had laughed, too.
I guess I don’t like the idea of being amused at someone else’s expense. That makes blanket statements tough, because situations that look similar on the surface might affect the people involved in very different ways.
So next time your math teacher trips and falls, ask if she’s all right, give her a hand, and help her laugh it off.
Speak up:
1 commentRANDOM: Musings on Celebrity
I had this thought ages ago. Might as well document it for posterity.
Every time I go to the grocery store and see tabloid headlines about so-and-so breaking up with what’s-his-name, I wonder why I’m supposed to care. Every time I see fans gushing and going into hysterics over the hottie-du-jour, I wonder if they think of him as a human being.
Celebrities are like the popular people in high school. I have the same “outsider” perspective on both, since I’m not famous, nor was I popular in high school.
(I’ll pause while you recover from the shock.)
While I wasn’t popular, I was friends with some people who were, and I observed the behavior of others. This was easy to do for a quiet, shy person such as myself.
(Okay, I’ll give you another minute. I know, these revelations are earth-shattering.)
Bottom line: Some of the kindest people I knew back then were some of the most popular. Some of the social high-rankers were jerks. Scum of the earth. I could only hope they’d either grow out of it, or crash and burn when reality hit.
Their popularity had absolutely nothing to do with the quality of their character. Their popularity told me nothing about whether they were worth knowing. It only gave them a wider audience.
Same goes for celebrities. I don’t care about Jennifer Aniston’s love life any more than I cared about the head cheerleader’s. And if I ever ran into the latest piece of guy-candy, I wouldn’t go to pieces any more than I did if some cute guy said two words to me in high school.
(Okay, when cute guys acknowledged my existence, I’m pretty sure my heart rate skyrocketed. The point is, I didn’t show it … I hope.)
So in my perfect world (which I’ll run someday), people will be treated as people, regardless of social status.
Now, off I go to the grocery store.