Caveat emptor! (but then it's free...so...)

What is it about comedy?

I don’t think a day goes by when my wife doesn’t tell me that she thinks I am funny.  Not funny in the sense that I maker her laugh, but in the sense that she believes I have the ability to make others laugh.  Now I kind of get what she’s saying.  There are times when I can be incredibly funny, but when it comes to broadcasting on the radio I don’t feel the same way about comedy as she does.  I cannot try to be funny.  I either am or I am not.  And often it’s that I am not.

When I am on the air, behind the computer writing, or in a room full of truly funny people I can’t tell a joke to save my life, but give me the most inopportune moment: a serious event, a funeral, a board meeting, a doctor’s office, or a room filled with a diverse ethnic population and I am hilarious.

Recently, at my mother’s funeral – god rest her soul – I was in the back of the church with my nephews, their wives, and my oldest sister and her husband and you would have thought I was the headliner at the Comedy Store.  My poor mother was up at the front of the chapel, as she always was, serious as can be, not saying a word and me in the back getting a laugh a minute.  Sometimes even at her expense.  And the sick, indecent, disrespectful part of the whole situation was that I couldn’t stop…nor did I want to.  But in that moment, when tears were flowing from many of the visiting guests, I was killing it.

Now that was likely the most serious offense that I can remember committing, but certainly it was not an isolated circumstance.  My youngest sister, Joanne, passed 6 months prior and a similar thing occurred.  And I am thinking that this could be a new career for me.  Funeral Comedian.  Why not.  They say the more you laugh the longer you live…so I show up a little late for one of the guests, but the rest benefit greatly.

I am always the first to crack jokes immediately after a tragedy and either people will look at me in shock or they will fall over laughing.  Of course I learned that any such joke is completely admissible as long as you follow it with the obligatory “too soon?”  but seriously, do I have a responsibility to mourn?  Is it our culture that requires it of us?  Or are some people just too uptight?

Okay, so I will never be a standup comedian, but as long as somebody in the crowd is laying down…I think I can get a laugh…or two.