Ashlandsblog

I have this one customer who keeps me sharp. I have the second one to test it out on. These two, black and white foxes, orbit me. And though my posture is steel, it softens around the two. People don’t like jokes – they either like the person who makes the joke, or maybe we’re naturally inclined to give in to our sentiments and senses and find someone funny simply because they think they are. So when the guy with the bad joke once again throws his hook into water, all the fish in the world scatter away. You don’t laugh at his joke? Oh, he’s ice fishing for it.

However, after a thousand bad jokes, a couple have landed. The best one being the time he reluctantly explained how, over the weekend at a different store, he spilled his drink as soon as he got to his driveway. Now I’m not a nice guy – I’m spectacular.

No, no, you’re not paying for this, you dropped it, mistakes happen. Don’t worry about it!

Upon getting his freebie, he snatches it and says, “That works every time!”

Any time he’s hanging out longer than he would, any time he’s waiting for a reaction to his joke? I know it won’t be funny. The couple of times he has been, he walks away. True winners don’t care for the applause – the reward is intrinsic. And some part of him knows this. On days he doesn’t have a joke, he acts busy – files dropping out of his briefcase, calculators falling, the numbers at his desk threatening to board flights unless he accounts for them right away!

His partner in crime is a bit more savvy. He’s dry. More attentive. A lesser man might miss it, but he’s familiar with disruption. And so am I. This one’s caught me off guard more than once. One time I joked about getting surgical work done – I was getting my teeth whitened – and he simply saw me, a slight pause and straight face: “So you’re finally getting some work done.”

And after I’m done laughing, he adjusts his comically large collar and grunts like he got a lion to jump across a ring of fire.

Now I have to wonder how one is funny and the other tries to be funny. But if you look close enough? Mister Bad Joke is exactly why the other one is funny. He takes the initiative and makes the joke. Mister Dry Wit and I are simply editors. Our humour relies on his. Otherwise, we come across as too jagged and sharp. The people with the bad jokes, or the ones that try to be funny, are foundational. They’ve got broad shoulders and no gym membership. 

People with a dry sense of humor rely on timing, place, person, precision – and although that’s not easy and a whole thing of its own, the guy with the bad joke simply has that one joke in his back pocket. No relation to time or audience.

Interestingly, the bad jokers are also never going to laugh at your joke. Their directive is simply to be the funniest. Someone else’s joke might as well pull the wake down on itself. The attendees won’t even look up from their phones.

My brother was like this too. You could never get him to laugh at anything I’d say. Perpetually unimpressed. He was also just like Mister Bad Jokes – chronically on his phone, probably stealing jokes. I guess where there’s lions, there’s hyenas too.

Meanwhile, Mister Dry Humour and I roll dynamite under each other’s doors. Our noses are red from the cold — it’s not paint.

I have this one customer who keeps me sharp. I have the second one to test it out on. These two, black and white foxes, orbit me. And though my posture is steel, it softens around the two.