A Joke (distinct from The Joke)
There is a joke structure that I have been trying to understand for years.
I am often at my most thick-headed when trying to understand humour. Someone in my business class in high school made a joke about someone being a brownnoser, a term I had never heard before. The joke was directed at me, and it quickly became clear that I had no idea what he was talking about. He leaned in and whispered in my ear, "Brown, like shit," and looked at me expectantly. I looked skeptical, which he took for further confusion. "I'll write it down for you!" he exclaimed, grabbing for a pen and paper.
"No, no, I get it," I said (which I did), "it's just...that's it?" I don't know what kind of humourous subtlety I was expecting from the phrase brownnoser, or from a student in my high school business class, but it wasn't there. Somehow I was disappointed.
We were playing a game on Sunday, in which we had to pick a class. Pre-game coordinating took place, with everyone deciding which classes we would all take for maximum group benefit. "Are you going to go ranger?" someone asked.
I blinked. I had no idea of the intended context of the joke, but it was time to take a stab in the dark and see what happened. I blinked again. "I 'ardly knew 'er!" I said mechanically.
Everyone laughed except me. I observed their reaction skeptically. "Thank you for saying that," someone said. I squinted at them, agreed to play ranger, and promptly screwed up the game. We lost.
Lessons:
I am often at my most thick-headed when trying to understand humour. Someone in my business class in high school made a joke about someone being a brownnoser, a term I had never heard before. The joke was directed at me, and it quickly became clear that I had no idea what he was talking about. He leaned in and whispered in my ear, "Brown, like shit," and looked at me expectantly. I looked skeptical, which he took for further confusion. "I'll write it down for you!" he exclaimed, grabbing for a pen and paper.
"No, no, I get it," I said (which I did), "it's just...that's it?" I don't know what kind of humourous subtlety I was expecting from the phrase brownnoser, or from a student in my high school business class, but it wasn't there. Somehow I was disappointed.
We were playing a game on Sunday, in which we had to pick a class. Pre-game coordinating took place, with everyone deciding which classes we would all take for maximum group benefit. "Are you going to go ranger?" someone asked.
I blinked. I had no idea of the intended context of the joke, but it was time to take a stab in the dark and see what happened. I blinked again. "I 'ardly knew 'er!" I said mechanically.
Everyone laughed except me. I observed their reaction skeptically. "Thank you for saying that," someone said. I squinted at them, agreed to play ranger, and promptly screwed up the game. We lost.
Lessons:
- You can get a laugh without knowing why it's funny
- You can get a laugh without it actually being funny
- Corollary: Once the requirements are met (sentence contains word that ends in 'er'), you can proceed to the punchline with no further thought and get a laugh