Beware of Rabid Badgers...

I used to think senior awards superlative awards were a farce. This stems mainly from high school awards. I don’t want to turn this into a bitter diatribe about cliques a la The Breakfast Club, but a blonde wearing an occasional feather boa does not a best-dressed senior make. I didn’t vote for her, and I don’t know anyone who did. But I digress. So when I found out that colleges, well, at least Valpo, held such a contest, I was surprised. Why, I wondered, would an institution of higher learning feel the need to hold such an empty popularity contest? I thought that right up til I friggin’ won one! Yeah, funny how that’ll change your whole perspective on stuff like that.

“Mom, I won a senior award,” I said gleefully on the phone later that week. “There were categories like ‘Most Likely to Succeed’ and ‘Smartest,’ but I won ‘Funniest!’” I said, thus demonstrating why I had won. “That’s nice, Lis. Those other ones would have been good to win, too though,” she said dryly. Ha, ha. Hey, wait a minute.

Even before this title was bestowed upon me from on high, there’s been an implied obligation that comes with being the resident comic relief. For instance, I have one friend in particular who promotes this obligation at any and every opportunity. “This is my funny friend Lisa,” she’ll say when introducing me to people, animals and houseplants. “She’s so funny! Say something funny, Lisa, and validate your existence.” Unfortunately, this is the exact combination of words that invokes an ancient gypsy curse placed upon me years ago. It caused the sections of my brain that control speech to seize up, allowing me to only emit monosyllabic noises that cannot, in a technical sense, be considered words and cannot in any sense at all be considered funny.

This, understandably, is a bit frustrating. So in lieu of avoiding this person and at the risk of not being able to put it together again, I’ve decided to dissect my sense of humor a little bit, until I figure out how it works, or at least until I think of something funnier to write about.

A lot of being funny, just like in magic, is misdirection. People expect you to say one thing, and instead you yell ‘Shazaam!’ and make the Statue of Liberty disappear. Oh, wait. I think that is magic. Hmm. I’ll get back to that. Anyway, another part of humor is the ‘Rule of Three.’ I don’t know if it’s really called that, if it’s called anything at all. An old Indian guide told it to me when I was bumming around Arizona for a few years trying to find myself. Or maybe I heard it on Nick at Nite during a special about Bewitched. Either way, here’s how it works. Basically, you need to be listing something off. Make the first two items on the list relatively normal, lulling your reader and/or listener into a false sense of security, and then whack them with something completely ludicrous! Big laughs if you set it up right. You can use it when conversing with your family, friends or schizophrenic head-voices. See how I slipped that in there? Simple, really.

Masterful techniques aside, some things are just funnier than others. This ‘humor quotient’ cannot be quantified, strictly speaking. It takes an experienced comic eye to spot. Sleep deprivation and certain over-the-counter cold medications might do in a pinch. For example- howler monkeys and llamas are funny, sloths and paralyzed puppies are not. Knock-knock jokes are funny, but anyone who knows my mother can tell you that drug jokes aren’t. Airplanes, as evidenced by every single stand-up comedian’s routine ever, are funny; while submarines and trolley cars generally are not. Some of these distinctions can only be learned by trial and error- error that is annoying and won’t let me alone. Learn from my mistakes: biologist haircuts and social workers are not funny. Yeah, it was news to me, too.

I think I’ll end my first lecture on the fundamentals of funny there, hopefully giving you an understanding of the complex inner workings of humor, and thus why I freeze up when put on the spot in the aforementioned situation. Maybe I should have a stock response on hand. Or a miniaturized copy of my ‘Funniest Senior’ certificate to display like an FBI badge. Or a rabid badger to toss at anyone involved in that conversation, giving me a chance to escape or think up a legitimate funny response. Heh, heh. Say something funny, Lisa.