One of our subscribers noted that our posts are pretty serious, and we should lighten up. So, I googled “jokes about getting older” and found a lot of good ones. Most were about the disintegration of our bodies as we age (yeah that’s pretty funny), or things we used to be able to do and can’t anymore, or just making fun of old people’s memory issues or ineptitude with electronics. Quotes like “At my age, the only pole dancing I do is to hold on to the safety bar in the shower!”or “Getting older sucks. I used to wake up feeling like a million bucks but now it’s more like a bounced check!” or “My status update? Is ALIVE good enough for ya?”.
I started to think about what makes Me laugh on a daily basis. Watching reruns of “Everybody Loves Raymond” produces plenty of laughter in our house, as we see ourselves and our parents in those characters. Marie is the mother or mother in law we may have had and hope we have not become! Frank is the cranky old grandpa we knew or may now have become. Deborah is the out of sorts, overwhelmed mom whose husband watches too much TV and doesn’t help around the house enough. And Ray himself is the beleaguered husband and son who is always trying to find a way to escape confrontation. Why is this funny? Because it mirrors our own frailties but in a non-threatening way.
Another thing that makes me laugh is when someone on Twitter takes a very serious subject, pokes fun at the absurdity of it, and I feel vindicated in my outrage. Late night comics like Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Kimmel regularly poke fun at the news of the day, somehow making it all feel a lot more tolerable. On rare occasions, both comics will become quite serious, like after a gun violence incident or when Jimmy Kimmel talked about his son’s surgery and linked it to issues with health insurance in the US.
All the knock-knock jokes we used to tell when we were kids are still around. Like “knock, knock, who’s there? Tank. Tank who? You’re welcome.” And there are new variations on “why did the chicken cross the road?” like “why did the cow cross the road?” “To get to the udder side.” Kids still laugh at those jokes, and we do too. They are fun and silly. We have a friend who tells really good jokes all the time. He repeats them, though, so when we have heard one, we just say “Tell Number 88 instead”!
Theories of humor about why we laugh suggest that things that are surprising, incongruous, make us feel superior, or confirm our own inadequacies are considered to be funny. When humor turns nasty or demeaning, it just isn’t funny anymore. The line between funny and not funny at all can be easily crossed.
We would love to hear from you about what makes you laugh and what makes something funny. Comment and share a joke with all of us!