Humor (Ha) Story!

            by Clio Bernhardson-Massolo

 

            I'm not funny. I'm worse than just not funny, I'm actually unfunny, meaning that every joke I make backfires spectacularly the moment it leaves my lips. Every time I tell a joke, a poor, homeless child in a developing country dies of the Ebola virus. See? Wasn't that horrible?

            I blame my comic ineptitude partly on my my atrocious memory, which inhibits my ability to tell a straight joke. I'll gather around a crowd to impart on them the latest witticism which has had the misfortune to cross my path. After taking a few moments to remember the beginning, in which time my audience is already starting to show the warning signs of apprehension and boredom, I launch into the joke (the faint of brain may do well to turn back now):

            "So this guy walks into a bar..."

            At this point, I'll forget where I was going with that and take a few more moments to remember. It's not uncommon for me to mumble to myself as I try in vain to remember what comes next. If I'm telling the joke to some friendly acquaintances, at this point they will begin to regret their decision to listen to me. If I'm telling the joke to some close friends who know me well, they would have long since turned their tails and fled at the first sign of intended humor. The joke carries on, however.

            "Ok, no, wait, it's a woman. It's an old lady, and she goes in and orders a drink. Or maybe she doesn't even order a drink, I think maybe she just goes in there. It doesn't even matter, really. Well she goes in and makes a bet with the bartender. Aw, crap."

            Now I've realized that this joke doesn't even take place in a bar. Another moment is taken to regain my bearings and figure out if I actually know this joke.

            "Alright, got it. So this old woman goes to the bank. I think there's some problem with her bank account or something, like maybe there's not much money in it..."

            Here, I go off on a tangent about how the fact that there's no money in it isn't exactly a problem, it just so happens that she's poor, so I'm not exactly sure if there was a problem, and so on and so forth. The more polite of my poor audience will be nodding patiently, desperately hoping that my joke will end before they begin sprouting gray hair from their ears.

            "Whatever, so she insists on talking to the manager. They talk... [Talking motions with hands] She decides to make a bet with him. She bets him that tomorrow morning, er, the next morning, his balls will be round. Uh, wait, no, square I mean, because they tend to be round normally... That wouldn't be a very good bet..."

            I mumble embarrassedly, but bravely venture on. My audience bravely ventures on with me. A few of them may be staring idly around or picking their noses.

            "Soo... oh yeah, she bets them that his balls will be square tomorrow morning... the next morning, I mean. Then she asks him if she can bring her lawyer to make sure that the guy doesn't back out. Oh wait, first the guy, the president of the bank, is like 'Yeah, I can't lose,' because he's pretty sure his balls aren't square, so he agrees. Then the lady asks if she can bring her lawyer, and he agrees because it's such a large amount of money."

            Now someone will point out how I didn't tell them how much money had been bet. Everyone else will glare at them because they don't really care, they just want the joke to be over so they can go about their lives and pretend this never happened. It just so happens that I am more than happy to go back and re-explain how the story goes.

            "Oh, I think it was like 100,000 dollars or so. Or no, let's say 200,000. So she bet him 200,000 dollars that his balls would be square, and he agreed. The next morning he wakes up early feeling pretty confident that he's going to win this bet because, you know, he hasn't go square balls. Even so, he feels them to make sure, but they're nothing but round. Or ovally shaped, maybe. So he goes into his office, and that afternoon the little old lady comes in with her lawyer and asks him 'So, are your balls square?' and the guy goes 'No, I'm pretty sure they're not,' but the lady wants to make sure they're not, so she asks him to drop his pants. Since they're betting for such a large amount of money, he obliges her.

            Here, my inherent ADD kicks in and I skip back the the middle of the story and change a meaningless detail. My audience is now tearing their hair out, silent tears of frustration streaming down their cheeks. A few are mentally jotting down notes that next time they should bring their swords in the case that they should have to commit sepuku. However, I've gone too far with this joke to stop now, so I ignore the pleading eyes and quavering lips of my peers and keep going.

            "Wait, let's make the amount 100,000, that'll be better. So then she asks if she can feel his balls, just to make extra-special sure. He's kinda weirded out by this, but hey, he's gonna win 100,000 dollars, so he lets her. She cups his balls for a second, nods her head, and says, 'Yup, they're round alright.' The President of the bank is ecstatic because he thought for sure there was some catch. But now the lawyer was looking really sad. The president asked him how come..."

            This is the part where I start giggling at the punch line before I've delivered it. Any jokee (recipient of a joke) can tell you that this sort of behavior from the joker can just about kill the mood for any hope of the slightest chance of humor. My audience by now are biting down on the cyanide pills hidden behind their fake front teeth, but pause, as this giggle is the indication that the end is near.

            "And the lawyer says that the old lady had bet him 200,000 dollars that she could hold the president of the banks balls!"

            My voice gets higher and higher during the course of the punch line, and at the end is a shrill squeak which makes anyone within a 30 foot radius turn their head in surprise. There is a sigh of relief which could be heard across the country. Behind me is set up a card table selling shirts which say "I survived a joke from Clio, were you so lucky?" The relief lasts as long as it takes me to think up another joke and open my mouth, but by then my audience is gone faster than the roadrunner from Wile E. Coyote, with not even so much as a "meep, meep" as a farewell.

            As incompetent a joke teller I may be, it can be useful at times. Say I'm stuck at a dinner party with my parents, and they're reluctant to let me be excused. If I'm feeling particularly rebellious, I can just open my mouth and loudly exclaim to the table "Oh! Let me tell you this joke I heard the other day!" The unsuspecting guests will turn their heads to me pleasantly, but my parents, horrified expressions scrawled over their faces, will not be able to hurry me away from the table fast enough. As they shove me violently down the stairs, I wave my goodbyes and say "Oh, I guess I'll have to tell you some other time!"