It’s my birthday and I’ll laugh if I want to

This past week I turned 80. In response to anyone who suggests I am too old to do something, I just say, “I’m only a year older than Joe Biden but a year younger than Anthony Fauci!”  I think I can do just about anything! One thing I know is that laughter is essential, no matter what your age. In the past year during the pandemic, the amount of humor that has circulated has been not only enjoyable but life saving.  It’s also the main reason we sometimes post humor on Fridays on this blog.  Our subscribers and readers seem to love it. So I intend to keep on laughing and finding humor wherever I can!

Does our ability to laugh and enjoy humor change as we age? There has not been a lot of research on this question, but the urban myth is that children laugh more often than adults.  Apparently it’s not true. Babies tend to laugh in response to their parents’ laughs, and the number of times a baby laughs increases in the first year and then levels off to mimic the mother’s laughter in succeeding years.  The more the mother laughs, the more the child is likely to laugh.  The amount of laughter we enjoy does seem to decline with age, however.  In one study, “Younger women, under the age of 24, laughed on average 22.7 times a day, whereas women over 60 years of age laughed only 11.7 times a day.”

Some studies find that older adults lose their ability to laugh and understand humor as they age.  Try this test and see if you can find the correct punch line:

The test included jokes like this:

A businessman is riding the subway after a hard day at the office. A young man sits down next to him and says, “Call me a doctor . . . Call me a doctor.”

The businessman asks, “What’s the matter, are you sick?”

Here were the possible punch lines:

1) The young man says, “I just graduated from medical school.”

2) The young man says, “Yes, I feel a little weak. Please help me.”

3) The young man says, “My sister is a nurse.”

4) The young man pulls out a water gun and squirts the businessman.

The correct answer was obviously No. 1, although you could tell it in a much funnier way.

The one thing that has been researched is that we laugh more often when we are around other people. It makes sense, doesn’t it? You can watch a comedy on TV at home or see it in a theater. It’s likely you will laugh out loud more when others are doing the same thing! Sometime test yourself when you are alone. Watch a comedy on TV and see if you laugh out loud by yourself. Then invite someone to join you whom you believe has a good sense of humor and see if that person’s laughter prompts you to laugh more too.

What does make us laugh? “Various theories have posited that people find amusement in the misfortunes of others, in expressions of otherwise forbidden emotions, in juxtaposition of incompatible concepts and in realizing that certain expectations have been violated.”  This is pretty technical and I’ll leave it to the researchers to dive into it on their own time. I do know I love a good joke, even though I’m not very good at telling one. Here is a list of 15 jokes about aging that might make you laugh.  I particularly like # 6 and hope to try it out some day. Which one is your favorite?

• • 1/ At my age, the only pole dancing I do is holding on to the safety bar in the bathtub.
  • 2/ We all get heavier as we get older because there’s a lot more information in our heads. I’m just really intelligent and my head couldn’t hold any more, so I started filling up the rest of my body.
  • 3/ A nice thing about aging and losing your memory is you meet new friends every day.
  • 4/ A nice thing about aging is you can hide your own Easter eggs.
  • 5/ A nice thing about aging is when you lose your glasses they’re usually close by, like on your forehead.
  • 6/ Did you hear about the 83 year old woman who talked herself out of a speeding ticket by telling the young officer that she had to get there before she forgot where she was going?
  • 7/ This old guy was talking to his neighbour telling him about the new hearing aid he just got. “It cost a fortune, but it was worth it. It works perfectly.” “Really,” said the neighbour. “What kind is it?” “Ten thirty.”
  • 8/ You know you’re old when you take a nap to get ready for bed.
  • 9/ You know you’re old when your head makes dates your body can’t keep.
  • 10/ You know you’re old when you use valet parking to avoid losing your car.
  • 11/ A 84-year-old man went to the doctor for a physical. A few days later the doctor saw him walking down the street with a gorgeous young woman on his arm. The next time the doctor saw him he asked how he was doing. “Great,” said the old guy. “I did just what you told me, ‘Get a hot momma and be cheerful’.” “I didn’t say that,” said the doctor. “I said, ‘You’ve got a heart murmur. Be careful’.”
  • 12/ A man has reached middle age when he is cautioned to slow down by his doctor instead of by the police.
  • 13/ Don’t worry about avoiding temptation.  As you grow older, it will avoid you.
  • 14/ You know you’re getting old when you wake up with that morning-after feeling, and you didn’t do anything the night before.
  • 15/ You know you’re getting old when you lean over to pick something up off the floor, you ask yourself if there is anything else you need to do while you are down there.

Some aging humor is insulting and patronizing, however. In the lists above, you will probably find more than one joke that makes you cringe. Yet, old people are often the butt of jokes about losing their memory or not being able to walk or run like they used to. I guess it’s worth asking, “What’s so funny about…..” and then think about how you would feel if you were the butt of that joke.

Nevertheless, I would love it if you would share a joke with me and our readers. Send me your best! It will make my birthday a lot more fun!

And here is a fun video that demonstrates how Beethoven, Bach or Mozart might have played “Happy Birthday”!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaZveHbxAYs