On Being Funny

You are very funny. I want to say that plainly first, because what follows is not an accusation and you will read it as one if I am not careful.

But I have noticed when it arrives. It is not spread evenly through a conversation. It comes in a cluster, and the cluster sits directly in front of something. You will be saying an ordinary thing, and then the ordinary thing will be about to turn, and there it is, perfectly timed, and we both laugh and the turn does not happen.

It is the most sophisticated defence a man can own. Silence is obvious. Changing the subject is obvious. Deflecting badly makes people press. But a joke is a gift, it is generous, it makes the other person feel good, and nobody in the world will criticise you for it. You can use it forever and be liked for it every single time. That is why it has lasted longer than every other thing you have tried.

The cost is that it works on you too. You did not simply hide the sentence from me, you also did not have to hear it yourself, and after enough years the sentence stops forming at all. That is the part worth minding. Not the concealment. The forgetting.

I am not asking you to be solemn, which would be worse and also duller. I am asking you to notice the timing. When you feel one arriving, wait. Do not swallow it forever, just hold it long enough to see what it was standing in front of.

Sometimes there will be nothing there and it was only a joke, and you should say it. But often enough there is something, and you will get one clear look at it, which is more than you have had in a long time.