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President,
Senior Scribes
Humor
By
Delbert Blickenstaff
Why
do
we elderly people often laugh when we refer to ourselves as “getting
old?” There is
nothing funny about falling down,
getting lost, forgetting why we walked into the kitchen, and the
hundreds of
aches and pains. In
fact, one has to be
tough to tolerate old age. Of
course,
some tolerate it better than others, but that’s no different than other
stages
in life. A friend
reminds me that
laughing is better than crying, and she’s right.
But I still ask why do people laugh.
Occasionally
I have listened to Louise talking to one of her friends on the phone,
and
laughing with almost every other sentence.
As I listen, and it’s hard not to, I
realize that her statements are not
really funny, but she is laughing because she is happy to be
communicating with
her friend. We
laugh easily when we’re
happy, even though what we are saying is not hilarious.
Also, I’ve noticed that Louise and
others
laugh when they are embarrassed. For
example: “I forgot
all about that
appointment we had, heh, heh, heh.”
Laughing helps to ease the hurt a little.
Are
there any subjects that should be avoided in telling jokes? That is a good
philosophical question, and I
don’t have the answer. I
do think that
ethnic jokes are in very poor taste.
I
have been bothered by some references to the sex act in which a
minister would
say to a couple just married, “Be fruitful and multiply, heh, heh.” In this case I think that
the minister is
embarrassed to talk about sex, but thinks that he can get by with it in
this
setting. I would be
interested in
hearing ministers discuss this topic.
Doctors
sometimes do funny things when they are sleepy. One morning I walked
into the
Emergency Room and was greeted with “You weren’t yourself last night.”
I asked
“What are you talking about?” I was told that one of my patients came
in after
having fallen down a flight of stairs. I was called and evidently
talked in my
sleep. I instructed the nurse to send the patient home. The nurse knew
that I
wouldn’t have said that if I had been awake. She called another doctor.
One
of
my doctor friends told me about telling one of his patients on the
phone that
he was very busy here at the hospital and couldn’t make a house call.
The
patient knew better because he had called the doctor at his home.
A
doctor received an urgent call from a patient and the doctor said “I’ll
be
right there.” He got dressed and went to the closet and put on his hat
and
coat. About 30 minutes later the patient called again and asked where
the
doctor was. His wife answered this time and said “I’ll see.” She looked
in the
closet and there was the doctor standing with his coat and hat on,
sound
asleep.
A
man
was sent to prison and he was in the dining room getting used to the
routine
when another prisoner stood up and yelled “24.”
The other prisoners roared with laughter. A short while later
another man yelled “61.” Again
lots of laughter. The
new prisoner couldn’t understand what
they were laughing at. So
he asked his
neighbor and was told that all the men knew the jokes by heart and had
numbered
them.
The
new prisoner decided that he would tell a joke.
So he stood up and yelled
“11.”
No one laughed.
Why didn’t they laugh at my joke, he
asked. His neighbor
answered, “Some
people just don’t know how to tell a joke.”
In
drama, falling down usually brings a laugh, as long as the actor
doesn’t get
hurt. Dick Van Dyke
was skilled at doing
pratfalls. And
there is the classic
picture of a building frame falling down around a solitary standing
figure and
not touching him. But
what makes a joke
or a scene funny? Usually
it is
something that happens unexpectedly.
Like the following story: Riding
in a crowded bus was a girl squeezed between two men on the back seat. As the bus was going
through a long blackened
tunnel, the girl was heard to say, “HEY, GET YOUR HAND OFF MY KNEE. Not you.
YOU!”
Here
is some good advice from your friendly neighborhood physician; Keep laughing, even if it
isn’t funny, because
it’s healthy.
Delbert
Blickenstaff, M.D.
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