Almost anything – especially if it’s commonplace – can become almost odd and totally foreign if thought about long enough. For instance, my sister has always remarked what strange things ears and noses are. I suppose such an effect on the mind comes from asking the question “Why?”. Yes, we know what ears and noses are, and on most days they are perfectly normal. But on our more thoughtful, questioning days, we (or at least people like me and my family) may ask why a nose has to be a rather long appendage sticking straight out of the middle of our face, or why we have two ears shaped the way they are sticking out of the sides of our heads.
The same can be said about a laugh (What? Did you think this was going to be about funny-looking parts of the human body?). A laugh is a funny thing. Why is it, in the grand scheme of things, that humans express their appreciation of something they find humorous with a series of audible (but not necessarily verbal or intelligible) bursts from their vocal chambers? Such bursts can take many forms. Some are not audible at all, but visible, as in the case of a person whose shoulders, chest, and sides shake with laughter and his face broadens into a big smile, but not a sound does he make. Others laugh loud and long, long and loud, till the very building shakes with the sound of it and makes everyone who hears it want to laugh out loud, too. Other laughers snort their laugh out their noses. Some people never laugh at all, but such people are beyond the help that this article ever pretends to offer. Whatever laughs laughers laugh with, the fact remains – a laugh is a funny thing.
What makes a person laugh? Why, humor does, you may reply. And you would be right. But such a reply would not be sufficient to fit the inquisitive nature of our inspection. What we really want to know is, what is humor? What makes something funny? After all, if we laugh when nothing is funny, we should get our heads checked.
Some people have sophisticated senses of humor. They like a complex, drawn-out joke, the subtleties of which you have to intellectually grasp in order to enjoy it to the fullest. Still others have a very simple sense of humor – a mere knock-knock joke, a play on words, or a funny face makes them giggle with glee. Other senses of humor are dry and sarcastic, the kind that doesn’t even seem like humor unless you know the person who possesses it. There are a few people in this world who take their humor from the misfortunes of others, as in the case of a person who laughs when their friend trips over a banana peel (a subset of this category would be the people who actually put the banana peel there in the first place). And then there are my sister and Uncle John (on my mother’s side) who are humorously-challenged. Some jokes are hard for them to fully “get”. And, as I always say, when you have to explain a joke too much, it loses its zing.
But what I am trying to get at is this – what is the nature of humor? I believe much of what makes humor humorous is incongruity. That is, it takes advantage of the “out-of-place-ness” of a situation. If anything is disproportionate, exaggerated, does not fit in, or grossly misses the mark of what we usually call “normal”, it is a candidate to be humorous.* People laugh at a clown with huge shoes or a bulbous nose. They laugh at the zany antics of Abbott and Costello or Bugs Bunny or the Three Stooges. But they most certainly do not laugh at the fact that a man crossed the road because he wanted to get to the other side because that’s where his house is. If they do, then there is something the matter with them. We expect the man to cross the road to get to his house, and we find nothing in this scenario that fits into the realm of “What is wrong with this picture?” And if you laughed at the thought of laughing at such a scenario, it’s because it would be out of place, strange, incongruous to be seriously laughing at it.
Even if humorous things share the same general element of incongruity, there are many different kinds of jokes. There are inside jokes, which only a select few people who know each other get. Closely allied with these are running jokes, which are funniest if you were there when the joke first started running (and all good running jokes tend to grow funnier the farther they run). There are puns, which are simply jokes that play on the meanings and sounds of different words. Knock-knock jokes are similar, although they have the detraction of being some of the lamest jokes ever told. I have witnessed – as I’m sure many of you have if you have been around small children long enough – a small child tell endless knock-knock jokes that made no sense whatsoever, to his own endless delight. I am not sure what made him laugh, but the sheer incongruity of the scene was what made it so funny. There are also parodies, which are jokes that exaggerate a situation or a person so that the absurdities of the situation or person may be highlighted so as to be properly laughed at. There are jokes for just about every season, situation, and condition of human life – jokes about school, jokes about work, jokes about marriage, jokes about age, jokes about the President, jokes about looks, jokes about money. The list is as varied as we are.**
And this brings me to the most salient point that I shall discuss here (not that any of my points here are salient; but this just happens to be the most so of any of them that may have been salient). Humor tells us a lot about ourselves as humans. The observation that humor comes out of incongruity tells us that we as humans tend to laugh at things we believe are out of the ordinary. It may be our way of dealing with the unknown or the unfamiliar, of holding those kinds of things up to the light of the things we do know and are familiar with so as to understand them better.
Unfortunately, humor is also our way as a species of coming to terms with the tragedies of our existence. The Biblical book of Proverbs says, “Even in laughter the heart may sorrow, and the end of mirth may be grief” (Proverbs 14:13). I believe someone once said (and I forget who did say it) something to the effect of “The reason I laugh so much is to keep from crying.” The fact is that life can sometimes be painful, and humor helps us deflect some of that pain. This is not a bad thing, for the same book of Proverbs tells us, “A merry heart does good, like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones” (Proverbs 17:22). Even doctors today tell us that having a belly-laugh or two each day helps our health – and it’s certainly better for us than being depressed all day. Why do you think all the great comedians – Bob Hope, George Burns, Jack Benny – lived into their 80s and even to 100? Could there be some connection between a merry heart, laughing, and making others laugh and longevity? It’s certainly something to ponder.
And so ends this brief look at humor and what makes it tick. I’m sure more things could be said. But let’s not just write, think, and talk about humor – let’s actually do it. I’m sure you have already found one good thing to laugh about today, and I’m sure you will be able find one more thing to laugh about before today is over. And there’s nothing wrong with that at all – enjoy it!
But there’s one more thing that strikes me as incongruous and continues to gnaw at my curiosity. Why does “laugh” have an “f” sound on the end even though it’s spelled with a “gh”?
*Author’s Note: It should be noted – and anyone who has taken a course in logic (with its maxim of “all A is B does not imply that all B is A”) will agree – that not all incongruous things are funny. For instance, you may find it uproariously incongruous that this article, by its very title, is about humor and funny things, but never made you laugh even once. I agree. That is quite incongruous. It also isn’t funny at all. Which only strengthens my point that not all incongruous things are funny.
**Author’s Note: I have purposely left off mentioning ethnic jokes. This is not primarily out of concern for any of my friends who may be ethnic (although I love all of you as I would brothers and sisters). My main reason for doing this is that one of the most popular kinds of ethnic jokes is the Polish joke. I am part Polish on my mother’s side, and I did not want to risk offending myself.
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