Feeling crotchety? Does it make you impatient when people don't know you're kidding?

It happens to me a lot, which of course means I'm just not all that funny and I should probably shut up. But I never, ever do.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 1999

Answers

Try having people thinking you're kidding when you're not. Cast me as Lassie, you've got a real tragedy on your hands...

Me: "Bark! Bark-bark! Bark-bark-bark!" (Translation: Timmy's fallen into the well and he's dying.)

Everyone I'm trying to tell: "Ahahahahahahaha!!!"

Coroner (re: Timmy): "He's dead, Jim."

-- Anonymous, August 16, 1999

I cant imagine how anyone can believe that you were being serious!! It's called humor people!!

-- Anonymous, August 16, 1999

If it happens to you a LOT, it just means that your sense of humor is often different from the people you are using it on. Nothing wrong with that, and there is no accounting for taste in humor or anything else.

As for animal rights activists not having any sense of humor (according to you), I know some who are very funny people with great senses of humor (I'm not one myself, but am very close to some people who are). They just tend not to find jokes or kidding about animal abuse or neglect very funny.

They might *know* you are kidding or trying to be funny, and they indeed "get it" in that sense, but they just don't think it's good joke material.

Most people don't like having their most cherished belief systems made fun of, and that's as true for animal rights true believers as it is for other kinds of true believers.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 1999

Sometimes, I'm on. I'll make a sarcastic, witty quip and people will laugh and laugh. It was like that Wednesday night, I kept coming up with great comments, making Nick, Lyida, David and the kids laugh.

And then, there are those days, when I make a joke based on a connection only I or a few other people get, and I get that blank stare. Usually, it's about sex. I'm getting better, I now can judge my audience and I usually only make appropriate jokes, but I guess I think about sex more than most people because I can make an innuendo out of anything.

I also have this thing I do where I say something in a completely dry tone of voice. I make it sound totally plausible, although when you think about it a minute you realize it's absurd. I will let this hang until the other person either gets it or has to ask, "really", at which point I will gladly say, "No, silly, just kidding". This was a beautiful part of my relationship with David when we first started going out - he didn't know me well enough to second-guess me quickly, and I had him going on a few whoppers for some time. Usually these are pretty funny once you realize I'm joking. Some people don't appreciate them at all.

Eh, whatcha gonna do?

-- Anonymous, August 16, 1999

Well, Judy, if someone could read yesterday's entry and think that I actually needed to be lectured that I should consider spaying my pets or adopting them out rather than letting them prey on each other, I'd say that goes beyond not liking to have their belief systems made fun of. I'd go so far as to say that such a person is goddamned idiot.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 1999

And by the way, I did not say that animal rights activists did not have a sense of humor. I said that humorless animal rights activists (i.e., a subset of animal rights activists, those who have no sense of humor) had found my site.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 1999

Perhaps the letter from the animal rights activist was a, oh I don't know, joke? Maybe the activist isn't the one who needs the humor check.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 1999

Dear Beth,

I'm trying to imagine someone so thick that they didn't realize you were joking with your natural selection article.

Errrrrr...

Sorry, can't do it.

If I got a letter like that, I might feel that they were trying to pull a joke on me themselves.

"Oh I get it! They want me to think that I REALLY AM going to do a Battle of the Household Pets! What a bunch of kidders."

Sad to say, it's probably just someone who a) has a major irony deficiency, and b) doesn't read very carefully.

Did your reply to them begin "Dear humorless butthead?"

This makes me remember an anecdote about Mark Twain.

In his book THE INNOCENTS ABROAD, a humorous travelogue, Twain reports finding a yellowed program in the ruins of the colleseum, describing the evening's entertainment talking about "Christians vs. Lions" etc.

One British reviewer of the book upbraided Twain because he doubted that the piece of paper could have survived all those years in the open air.

So you're in good company, anyway.

A faithful reader,

Bill

-- Anonymous, August 16, 1999

No, the person definitely wasn't joking, but I would say that they mostly didn't read very carefully. It sounded like they may have read the first sentence and then skimmed a bit. It sounded like he thought I was a dog and cat breeder who had puppies and kittens running all over the house, and I was thinking about killing them instead of finding homes for them.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 1999

I think it's the bane of almost every person whose brand of humor depends heavily on sarcasm.

This happens to me all the time, but most especially with my parents. My mother just does not seem to understand sarcasm and irony. She always takes what you've said at face value -- even when delivered in what I think of as a "ha ha" deadpan tone.

Even my brothers, who ALWAYS used to get it, are beginning to lose it and stare at me like I have six heads.

I've learned to shut up and shut it off at work 'cause it just gets me in trouble and I hardly ever try to be funny in my journal.

It just never works for me. *sheepish grin*

I dunno how you do it Beth.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 1999

It happens to me all the time, though I can't think of a good example of a joke I made that somebody didn't get. I like to say outlandish things in a dry, deadpan way too, and people either think that's funny or they're mystified by it. My mother in law totally doesn't get my sense of humor, which I inherited from my own mother. Luckily, my husband shares it. Lucky for him, that is, or he wouldn't be in the picture.

Last week I saw a new podiatrist and was describing my problem to him. I said "My podiatrist in San Francisco says I have an extra bone in my foot that's causing this pain and I'd like to find out what's going on. My husband is concerned because he thinks it's my undeveloped twin."

That was kind of a test. I'm pleased to say that the doctor laughed.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 1999

The best solution for this problem, I find, is to make sure that you have at least 1 (one) friend with a sense of humor properly twisted to find any thing you say funny. This friend need not be present when you make a joke, and it need not be the same friend for every joke.

Any time a joke falls flat, you simply store it away for repetition to said friend as an anecdote. You finish said anecdote by saying, "...and the -funniest- thing is that he/she DIDN'T GET IT!"

This illustrates the value of laughing at someone rather than with them.

Note: In absence of a suitable friend, a close sibling often makes an appropriate substitute.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 1999

I think the great tragedy of my life is that my boyfriend and I often take each other's sarcastic humor seriously. Incompatibly humored people should not mate. However, he usually fakes it and plays along when I do as Vic suggests.

Vic, aren't you supposed to be in surgery right now? Go take your Vicodin, boy.

Good suggestions, though.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 1999

Like one of the other people who responded I can make a sexual inunendo out of almost anything. A good example is when I tell people that I realized when I married my wife I was marrying a good, honest, loyal catholic girl. I just didn't realize that I married a none too. ( Don't get none, don't want none, won't give none. )

I've been told that I have a very dry sense of humor. I can say something hysterically funny and never smile. People say that even when you are dying laughing I will look at you with this look like "What the hell you laughin about? It wasn't that damn funny!"

I've also discovered that the majority of people just don't have the I.Q. to understand a lot of the things that I say. I recently had a man thank me after I asked him, "Do you dress yourself in the morning or do you have to have help?" This leads me to the conclusion that I really am a one of a kind, because everybody around me is an idiot.

Mark

-- Anonymous, July 25, 2001

It's also possible that those people think you're being incredibly rude to your wife, or that they've realized that she's planning to kill you in your sleep. You might want to start sleeping with a light on.

-- Anonymous, July 25, 2001

Please don't feed the trolls, Beth.

-- Anonymous, July 25, 2001

But they're so hungry!

-- Anonymous, July 25, 2001

Yes! Hungry for a spanking! Is that really a need you want to feed?

-- Anonymous, July 25, 2001

Ahhhh.. So that's the proper way to get a spanking around here.

As a highschooler I used that "Did you dress yourself this morning" line many a time myself. All I ever got was a lot of blank stares, a bunch of wide eyed open mouth drooling and brow wrinkling looks of confusion. In retrospect, maybe remedial shop class wasn't the best venue for such comedic genius.

-- Anonymous, July 25, 2001

I have the same problem as Mark Horner, probably becuz I am so damb smart. I tell my friends jokes, like "Your mama wears combat boots," and they just stare at me blankly, no matter how hard I try to help them out by laughing hysterically.

(Boy, I hope the html work, or Ill relly luk dum).

-- Anonymous, July 25, 2001

God, I haven't seen that site in a long time. It's like looking at crime scene photos.

-- Anonymous, July 25, 2001

I find the whole realdoll phenomenon fascinating in a Rikki Lake kind of way. There's a long thread on 3WA about them, where the participants dredged up a site dedicated to realdoll repair and, err, customization. There's another by the "boyfriend" of a realdoll. I think it's a sort of necrophilia. Or maybe the realdoll lovers are just objectum-sexual, like Mrs. Berlin Wall (formerly Madame Guillotine). God, I love the web. And can you tell I'm trying to start drafting a motion to compel (aka paper Nyquil)?

-- Anonymous, July 25, 2001

Oh, man, I can totally see what that guy needed a RealDoll ... no living/breathing woman would have stood for that yellow carpet for a second.

-- Anonymous, July 25, 2001

The carpet does match the couch. I can't believe guys actually pay good money for those things. Sure, she'll never have a headache, she'll never get pregnant, she'll never bitch after you finish up and roll over to sleep, she'll never talk your damb ear off, she'll never be grossed out by the brown streaks in your undies, she'll let you stick your wiener in any hole on her body it'll fit in (and let you push, pull and shove until your convinced on the others) and maybe she'll let you spread her legs just as wide as pssible without crying and carrying on about ligament damage, but, until they make one that can carry her flabby ass to the kitchen and get me a beer, I'll stick to the real ones.

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2001