Salvation by Laughter Articles

New life and adventure are as close to you as your imagination. It’s pure magic. Why? Because your imagination is the gatekeeper to your spirit of play.

Remember, way back to those magic words, “Let’s pretend?” They triggered play instantly. Without effort, you transformed whatever was at hand into a new and exciting experience. It carried you into a world where there was nothing you could not do.

As ethnologist Sally Carrighar observed : “It [play] furnishes its own energy.” Play is a renewing experience, not a draining one. What a welcome companion to carry into the minutia of one’s “daily grind.”

In today’s society we are nearly overwhelmed by conditions that inhibit natural, imaginative playfulness. We are governed by goals, objectives, deadlines and quotas. Some are imposed on us and some we impose ourselves.

We are poorer because of it. It’s no wonder that so many people passionately look forward to retirement. At one time I worked in a state governmental agency. What was said then may still be true: Every state worker knew the exact date of his or her retirement.

Why not turn the imagination loose in our work and other daily responsibilities, making the exciting energy of play an actual part of ourselves?

Your playful imagination can do wonders for both your morale and your effectiveness. Here are two examples from my own experience:
Early in World War II while I was waiting to be called into active military duty, I worked on a farm. When I finished milking the cows I had to run the hand-operated cream separator. If you’re old enough you will remember them.

After pouring the fresh milk into the large funnel on top of the separator, I was no longer in the milk house. I transported myself to the deck of a U. S. Navy aircraft carrier. When I grabbed the handle on the side of the separator and started my huff-and-puff cranking, I was no longer rotating the disks inside the separator to get them up to needed centrifugal force for separating the cream from the milk. I was winding the engine of a navy fighter plane just as I saw them do in movies and newsreels. I was readying the plane for take off to engage the enemy.

Twice a day – early morning and late evening – I turned the handle faster and faster and faster right up to take off time: That is, that moment when the cream was separated. Charles Schulz’s Snoopy had his Red Baron, and I had my enemy somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.

Not only did my playful imagination turn the chore – and it was a chore – into an adventure, but to the farmer’s delight, my dedication to naval duty paid off for him. The butterfat count went up considerably, and he got more money for his cream.

Here’s the point. This was pure play on my part. However, if increasing the butterfat count had been the objective of my activity, it would no longer have been play. Play delights in the activity itself. The joy and satisfaction do not depend on some preconceived result or goal.

The other example was in my work as a hospital chaplain. It came about as I began taking a professional interest in the experiences of play. I had already identified within myself one of the satisfying values that came from my childhood play – adventure. So I asked myself, “How would that Kansas kid make an adventure out of this work?”

Within seconds the answer came. He would imagine himself as an undercover agent in a prison where the people (patients) were confined against their will. His job was to secretly plot with them to find ways to escape. Of course, this had to be hush-hush and shared with no one. In reality this was not difficult because nothing in this imaginative setting inhibited me from doing the actual work I was to do.

To my delight I discovered that over time this new sense of place increased my creativity both within the hospital and in the community.

So it can be for you. The examination of your childhood play will reveal specific values that you gained or realized in your private play. With these identified, your imagination can show how to pursue them in your here and now.

Doing this does not mean one’s whole time will be spent in a playful nature. There were many times when the situations of my work were far from playful and were not experienced as such. But from time to time I could mentally move into my playful image and receive the energy and savor the detachment that play brings.

(c) 2006 Cy Eberhart

Is it time for your second childhood? Maybe it is and you have failed to notice. You’ve been too busy doing the things American adults do best: work, worry–and wonder why.

A vital part of human nature is your spirit of play. You came into the world with your share. More than likely you used it from the beginning. A game of peekaboo with an infant shows how early it is in place. Just watch the reaction. How eager and responsive the child is to engage in playfulness.

Unfortunately, it’s all too common today to associate playing with childhood, not with adult life. Remember hearing things like this from well meaning teachers and parents when you were young? “Act your age.” stop playing and get to work.” “When are you going to grow up?” But burn this thought into your consciousness: In the growing process playfulness is not meant to be left behnind. It is to come along with you, keeping heart and spirit young regardless of your age.

An episode in one “Marvin” comic strip illustrates two ways to view play: One from the outside in and the other from the inside out. In this strip; the family was at the beach. Marvin’s father, looking at his son on the sand, said to himself, “Marvin is playing.”

Marvin, shovel and bucket in hand sitting near a newly dug hole and a pile of sand, had his own thought. He said to himself, “I’m a pirate digging for buried treasure.”

Play when viewed from the outside in is an activity, but when viewed from the inside out, it is a way of life with at least two important features. First, Marvin is serious about what he is doing. It is not to him something frivolous or without purpose. There is intense concentration in this game of imagination.

The second feature is illustrated in children’s popular game of dress up. They begin first with the clothing. Then they try on this and then that. As they do they begin to imagine themselves in various settings. In the course of the game they may go to work, travel, go out to dinner, go to a fancy ball. The play may move from one thing to another. But none of these imagined ventures were a precondition for the playing. These came into the imagination with the act of playing.

In other words, in true play the satisfactions come in the playing itself and not from realizing or achieving some specific goal.

Play generates a vitality that you cannot find in any other activity. With playfulness comes enthusiasm, expectancy, spontaneity, imagination, creativity, adventure, experimentation, discovery. The very attributes one needs to enhance well being and sustain morale.

Desmond Morris, in The Human Zoo, interpreted play activities this way: “One of childhood’s most precious qualities is the urge to seek and find and test, to invent, to discover…The child asks new questions; the adult answers old ones; the childlike adult find answers to the new questions. The child is inventive; the adult is productive; the childlike adult is inventively productive.”

You are never more yourself than when you are at play.

Are you in need of play? It doesn’t have to remain lost or out of reach. Look to the ways of your own youth, and let it live in you once more. You’ll never be sorry. Rediscover your playfulness. Make laughter as common for you as it is for children on the playgrounds at school.

(c) 2006 Cy Eberhart

When people get together informally, sooner or later they begin telling humorous stories. Interestingly enough, most of them will be true. It’s what I call real-life humor:The silly thing little Johnny did, the trick Harriet played on Dan, what happened when the boss stood up to talk
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One reason for this is the desire to create laughter. We delight in laughter and are ready to call anyone “weird” who doesn’t.
Since it’s laughter you’re after, you’ll improve your chances by patterning your stories after the structure of gags and jokes.
The joke structure is an art form with distinct, interrelated parts designed for one purpose–to bring a laugh! Knowing what creates a successful joke can help you be more successful in telling your own stories. After all, this joke form has stood the test of time.

In fact, here’s a gag that made the rounds 2000 years ago in Rome:
1st husband: A terrible thing happened. My wife just hung herself from a fig tree.
2nd husband: Could I get a few slips from your tree for my garden?

Now let’s look at what goes into a successful joke or gag.
Economy of words
Too many words is the surest way to kill a joke, and it is the most common mistake. What is true of the joke is also true for your personal humorous stories. Some people spend so much time on irrelevant details that the listener is bored by the time the punch line comes. There’s a polite chuckle instead of the guffaw that the account of the story might have received had half the words been left out.

Listen to professional comics. Notice how every word contributes to the movement of the joke. Cut every word that doesn’t move the story along, vividly and rapidly. This, of course, takes some home work. An easy and effective way to do this is record your stories on a tape cassette, CD or your computer. When you listen, you’ll soon know what can be left out.
This practice can make you a more interesting story teller, will increase your confidence and give you bigger laughs.

A strong set up
The set up is the first part of the joke that builds in the listener’s mind the thought or image the punch line will play on. Using the Roman joke above as an example, the first husband’s line sets up the picture of sorrow and tragedy. A sharp contrast to the image conveyed in the punch line.

The more vivid the scene, the more the set up stimulates the listener’s imagination, the greater the laugh potential. If the set up is weak so will be the laugh. Count on it! Your humorous stories will benefit from openings that plant the necessary thoughts and images. Remember, you don’t have to tell all. Let the listener use imagination. But be sure to get in the important information.

My father-in-law had a favorite shaggy-dog story about a worm named “Motor” who lived in an apple. The worm kept eating his way through the apple with the punch line being, “Out bored Motor.” Once he neglected to mention the worm’s name. He delivered the punch line with great enthusiasm. You can guess the result.

The Pause
The pause is just that. A pause in the story line, giving the listener a chance to catch up, as it were, to “see” clearly the picture presented by the set up. This pause is essential in laugh getting.

Professional comedians call it “timing.” Watch them at work, pay special attention to their pauses. They study their jokes in advance to decide just where to pause, where to give the audience the chance to visualize, so when they introduce the unexpected, or ludicrous punch line, the effect will be the most laughable
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Your stories will benefit from such a pauses. They can bring a dramatic effect that encourages a laugh instead of a smile.

The Punch Line
The punch line is the dynamite. It’s what everyone’s been waiting for. The successful joke has just the right number of words. No more, no less. Examine a few classical jokes and notice the effect when you add a word or two. Even a trivial word like “a” or “the” may weaken it.

So when you reach the point, say it in the fewest number of words possible. And if your story allows for it, phrase the punch so that your listeners can use their imagination to “discover” the humor of your story. Again, listen to the pro’s, study some joke books to see how the punch line tickles the imagination.
One good place to see how the joke structure has been applied to humorous events and stories is in the popular Readers Digest feature, “Life In These United States.” The anecdotes are brief, have a descriptive set up, and a punch line.

Include these tips with your stories the next time you sit down for a casual talk with friends. You will all be laughing.

(c) 2006 Cy Eberhart

“Men will confess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth, or a wig,” wrote Frank Moore Colby, “How many of them will own up to a lack of humor?”

In my experience the answer is “None.” Ask any gathering for a show of hands who among them does not have a sense of humor. Not a hand goes up.

Unfortunately, the experience of humor is so pleasant and entertaining, that it is all too easy to overlook humor’s fundamental roll in maintaining our emotional balance. However, an understanding of what your sense of humor is up to will help elevate its importance and increase your respect for it. Your sense of humor has real work to do and will do it faithfully if you’ll let it.

First of all our mind-body system needs to experience humor. It is essential for our well being. In fact, our system actually searches for it. An event that happened in my service club demonstrates this.

For years one particular club member volunteered to compile a scrapbook to present to the outgoing club president as a memento of his term in office. On one occasion he was fourteen months late in making the presentation. This happened because the compiler had experienced an extended illness, which all of us were aware of. In the presentation ceremony he explained the delay by saying, “When Chuck became President I had a heart attack.”

The club members erupted in laughed as our sense of humor simply bypassed the known facts of the statement. Instead it focused everyone’s attention on the erroneous but comical meaning: “Chuck as President so upset me that I had a heart attack.”

Notice that there was no “build up” to this comical thought as there is in the usual structure of many jokes. The thought was not one that anyone even considered. Instead, it was spontaneous and immediate. The sense of humor, with an energy force all its own, over rode the clear facts and pulled the comical meaning out of his factual remark and held it up, letting it glisten like a jewel sparkling in the sunlight. It rewarded us with laughter and delight.

This search for humor makes sense when we realize that the sense of humor is a natural part of ourselves. It was a part of human nature long before there were stand up comics, gag writers and cartoonist. It is not an added feature, sort of after thought. Our ability to discover and appreciate humor is structured in our very being. So what need satisfaction does the humorous experience meet?

A look at where the word “comedy” comes from gives a clue to answer. Remember the boy in the neighborhood who chose to stay home instead of going with the others in search of adventure. and how the gang considered him strange and gave him a few uncomplimentary names.

Well, the word, “comedy” apparently comes from the name of a Greek demigod named Comus who behaved something like this. As Joseph Meeker, author of The Comedy of Survival, explains it he was a god quite content to leave great intellectual matters to Apollo and the driving passions to Dionysus. His attention went to household affairs seeing to it that the biological processes necessary to keep life moving along in normal fashion did so: Plants propagated, family and community life perpetuated., has said, It was the commonplace conditions friendly to life that Comus sought to keep in good order. Keeping life in balance was his appointed task.

One’s sense of humor works in much this same way. You’ve experienced it in action again and again. It happens in work or club meetings where the issues are serious and the debate long. Suddenly, from out of nowhere someone says something with a comic ring. The assembly erupts in laughter

I recall listening to the radio broadcast of the 1952 National Republican Party Convention during the proceedings in nominating the GOP presidential candidate. One particular issue ignited a strong floor debate. As it went on and on even sitting at home you could sense the mounting tension. And then it happened. According to protocol any delegate recognized to speak had to first announce his or her name and the State the delegate was from. When emotions seemed near the breaking point a delegate went to the microphone to be recognized and said, “My name is John Johnson, I come from Wisconsin.”

The coincidence of this delegate’s identification being identical to the popular stereotype of a Wisconsin resident was too much for the assembly. to maintain its strained emotions. The entire assembly was convulsed in laughter. Comus had done his work

Often this response is called “comic relief.” But that’s looking at the reaction through the wrong end of the telescope. It’s not simply relief. It’s your sense of humor hauling you away from the stress and strain that interfere with your proper emotional and physiological balance. It’s saying to you. “Hey, you’re too far afield. Come back where you belong, Over here, where you are relaxed and at your best.”

(c) 2006 Cy Eberhart

Your own definition of humor is probably as good and exact as any other. At an International Conference on Humor one lecturer said that there was no single definition of humor. The indeed the array of definitions seemed endless, apparently shaped by any individual.
This dismayed a college student in the audience who had collected over 200 different definitions, seeking to uncover an academic definition.

Our sense of humor stands poised, ready to reward us with the experiences of humor we need. Even so, many people have a difficult time turning it loose.

A common reason is usual initial thoughts we have about humor. Humor is supposed to give us big laughs. But this just isn’t so! The great American humorist Will Rogers said, “I don’t like the jokes that gets the biggest laugh, as they are generally as broad as a house and require no thought at all. I liked one where, if you are with a friend, and hear it it makes you think and you nudge your friend and say, “He’s right about that.’ I would rather have you do that than to have you laugh – and then forget the next minute what it was you laughed at.”

What is profound in these words is that a nation has remembered what Will Rogers said,and still nudge one another because his thoughts touch our living today.

Quite a contrast to the usual entertaining comics of today.; There goal is the laugh! “Laugh lines, not smile lines,” they demand of their writers. Good comics get the big laughs. But, as Rogers said, few people remember what they laughed at.

Thomas Carlyle, years before Rogers, had much the same thought, “True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart…it issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.”
Laughter is important. It has its own part to play in humor, but it is by no means the whole of it.

There’s good news in this. Awareness of this face can increase the mileage we get from our sense of humor. Now we can take off the burden of the big laugh and give our sense of humor more freedom to work. With this expectation gone, you can appreciate it in those quiet moments. Like the time you stood in front of the mirror dressing in your best with the intent of making that all-important impression on someone. Then came the thought, “Hey! Who’s kidding whom? No matter what the trappings, your are still just plain you.”

You smiled, knowing it was true. Found out by your sense of humor, your pretense was unmasked. You went on dressing, a little more relaxed about who you were and the farce you were engaged in.
This is the kind of humor that makes it possible for your to smile at the difficult conditions of life, smile with enjoyment and acceptance. It is the humor Rogers and Carlyle spoke of, the humor that leads to the richer life. But how does one get the sense of humor active and going?

Get your goal straight. Your sense of humor is, first of all, for your own use and only secondly for others. Don’t get confused thinking that you’ve got to communicate the humor you’ve discovered. It’s easy to get mixed up here. Not telling a good story, of having a rapier-like wit is not an indictment of your sense of humor. Discovering humor and communicating it are two different experiences. You can benefit from your discovery without any verbal communication at all. Sensing it for yourself is your first goal.

Discovering humor is one thing. Communicating it to others is another. In that you are strictly on your own.

© 2006 Cy Eberhart

It’s a funny thing about the sense of humor: There are times when its just plain mischievous. The way is can slip into our consciousness unannounced, unanticipated. and frequently uninvited. It’s as though it had a mind of its own and delighted in playing the trickster with ourselves being the one the trick is on. The effects of this can range from being mystified, embarrassed and even victimize. But even as this happens we’re secretly smiling at the trick
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Mystifying
To celebrate a woman’s birthday her daughter and son-in-law took her to an upscale beach-front restaurant for dinner. The woman dressed in her best dinner attire. They arrived at the restaurant early so she decided to take a short walk on the beach and enjoy the beauty of the sunset. While strolling near the water’s edge a sneak wave rolled in, sweeping her into the surf. In the midst of her frantic struggles to save herself, she saw in her mind’s eye how funny it was to be drowning when all dressed up in her best finery.

Author Joseph Meeker of Comedy of Survival, describes an equally mystifying occasion with humor. While hiking in the Alaska wilds, he encounter a moose. The turned on him and charged. His chance for escape lay in climbing a near by tree. He reach it in time but its lower branches were all dead. As he grabbed at them to pull himself to safety, they snapped off one after the other. In the midst of this drama, he visualized the comical scene of his frantic scrambling, the branches breaking and the hard, charging moose made

Victimizing.
Not only can the workings of the sense of humor mystify, it can estranged one from others. A psychologist had a particular way of handling this in his group therapy session. During the discussions when he noticed a participant begin to light up with a smile and an inner laughter, he would avoid letting the person share this event with the group. Instead he had the person tell him about it later in private. Because, he said, the humor that accompanied such inner revelations or “ah has” invariably angers the others. It is usually for one of two reasons, sometimes both. Since the experience did not engage the others’ sense of humor of the others, they would not see anything humorous or significant in it. Secondly, it being so individualistic, it was not a shared humor and this would anger them.

I was on the receiving end of just such an event in my chaplaincy training. During the training we held weekly group meetings where we discussed our varied experience and reflected on our actions and feelings. On one occasion I had a clear insight regarding myself and the humor of it prompted an audible laugh. All eyes turned and I eagerly and naively explained. I was not prepared for what came next. My interpretation was immediately challenged as not being valid, and for the rest of the meeting every other group member attacked whatever I had said.

Embarrassing
The sense of humor can also set the stage of personal embarrassment. It happened to me when, as chaplain, I was with a family in the Emergency Unit who had just been told the father had died. At one point it was necessary for me to leave the private room for a moment. That’s when I saw my next door neighbor and his wife sitting in the general waiting area. Startled, I went to them and asked what was wrong.
Here I have to give a little background. Two days before their teenage daughter and another teenage girl in our neighborhood decided to have a foot race on the street that went in front of our homes. I was seated where I saw all that went on. They were lining up to begin and the other girl’s mother, a very attractive blonde, divorcee, decided that she wanted in the race also. No sooner had she lined beside them when the daughter’s father (my neighbor) decided that he should be included in the race because he had been something of a track star in his day.

All lined up. Then they were off. The father’s running shoes happened to be his house slippers. After six of seven strides he fell spread eagle on the asphalt street. I started to go to him, but he got up immediately, saying he was not hurt.

Now Sunday evening he was in the Emergency Unit because he wanted his bruises and scabs looked at, nothing really serious ee said. So I went my way, put him out of my mind and returned be with the family in the private room.

Suddenly, from out of nowhere came the image of my neighbor sitting in an exam room with the doctor asking, “How did this happen?” and heard my neighbor say, “Well, there was this blonde…”

I all but burst out laughing. To keep from it, I bit my lip, crossed my legs, twisted them tight and sat on my hands. Fortunately, the audible laugh never came. In that moment of humor I was totally miserable.

The sense of humor seems to exists in a realm of its own. It often goes its own way, leaving us to pick up the pieces. There’s humor in that.

© 2006 Cy Eberhart

You have a your own private workout gym for your sense of humor. A place to keep it toned and healthy. It’s your imagination. And the good news is that if you know how to worry you know how to use your imagination. This means you have no reason not to start your humor exercises right now.

Worry is nothing but your imagination in chains. Humor is your imagination freed. There is no restricting your imagination. With it you can see yourself flying like a bird, slaying dragons, being President of the United States., zipping around like Peter Pan. It’s your imagination that allows you to “see” yourself and your situation from other than the usual point of view. Most importantly your sense of humor needs your imagination.

But how do you bring the two together? By practice! That’s the way you learned to talk, to walk., to ride your bike, to swim. So it is with imagination and humor. It’s practice
And it’s not difficult. A former editor of a humor magazine once wrote, “Day and night the staff thought funny and nothing else. We looked over everything for the joke that might be in it. Consequently, we came up with one-liners, laughable incongruities and cartoon ideas…” (emphasis added)

That’s the way, you let (not force) your imagination to explore situations for the “joke that might be in it.” Not all of the time. Not 24-hours a day like the magazine staff did. That was their job. But you can practice enough to be proficiently aware of the humor in your living.

One humor workshop leader, Virginia Tooper of California, included a “humor walk” activity in her Humor Therapy session. Her groups took to the streets looking at the common and the ordinary through new sets of eyes by “thinking funny.” This is nothing more than letting their imagination key off of objects and events that met the eye and waited for something to show itself.

Try the humor walk yourself. You can do it any time, on the street, at work while walking down hallways, around home, standing in a line.
Signs are good to practice on. One I once saw in the post office: “Over 40,000 pieces of mail delivers on time every day.” My mind added, “And 80,000 pieces delivered late.” Not a side splitter but good enough for a little self pleasure.

Using this humor-walk idea in a workshop of my own, a couple came back to the group carrying a flyer promoting membership in a church hymnal society. The copy on the flyer included the word “hymn” extensively. When the woman read aloud with we listeners construing “hymn” as “him,” the comic effect was rollicking. In fact, we had to take a recess too give time to recover from our laughter.

By giving yourself permission to purposefully think funny, you will be well rewarded no matter where you are.

Being open and alert to humor does not mean closing yourself off to your other sensitivities. The sense of humor does not monopolize your system. Just as you can use your sense of sight, sound, and touch at the some time,so can you your your sense of humor in conjunction with other needs.

You can be in that heavy meeting, understand the seriousness of the deliberations, and at the same time see humor in it. Because of that you have freedom to be more responsive to the issues than you have been before.

It’s too bad that common belief has it that humor is incidental to the important matters of life; The truth is that our mind and body need humor. Without it life cannot amount to much. It becomes but a dull routine, with pitifully small rewards for the labor involved. Life without humor must surely be hell.

Lord Houghton said that the sense of humor was the “just balance” in the faculties of man. So remember to keep that balance in whatever you do. Live your life with humor. You’ll be richer for it. Imagination and practice is all you need.

© 2006 Cy Eberhart

There are many occasions when you can find yourself speaking to an audience. These can range from report to club members to a formal talk or lecture at a professional gathering . Whatever the occasion you want information be of interest and remembered.

Humor can help you achieve both goals.

Now this is not the same as giving humorous talk. That is a most difficult speech to deliver effectively, requiring a special talent and skill. These tips have to do with the use of humor in your presentations, whatever these may be, to help make your points clear and remembered.

Everything that said in my previous article, Humor – Tips for Using it in Everyday Conversation,also applies to using humor in speeches. But public or platform speaking at is sometimes called does have some additional considerations. Almost every professional speechwriter agrees on what the important ones are.

First
You are speaking to present an idea or discuss a subject. Use only those jokes or bits of humor that help you do that. A funny story that has nothing to do with your subject won’t help you or your audience. Often a person is inclined to begin a presentation with a joke or humorous story. Your are immediately on shaky ground when you do. You have, in effect, a stand-alone bit of humor. It may or may not get the laugh you want. If the audience does not laugh, then you’ve lost that moment of initial interest audiences always give a speaker.

One way to overcome this risk is making sure your opening story has a point so strong that even if the laugh does not come, you can continue immediately focusing on the point of your story.

Second
With humor you can actually make a point three times. You make your statement, follow it with your joke to highlight or illustrate what you just said, then you restate your original point. Three times you made your point: Your statement, the illustrative joke, a restatement. The listener, in recalling the humor at a future time, also recalls the point associated with it..
One comedy-writing technique to help you fit a story to your subject is called “Switching.” You can change either the build up or the punch line for it to fit your subject matter.

Example of changing the build up:
Original:
Neighbor: Do you like your new sister, Tommy?
Tommy: Oh yes, but there are lots of things we needed more.
Switched:

Friend: I hear your mother got married again. Do you like your new father?Tommy: He’s all right, but there’s lots of things we needed more.

Example of changing the punch line:
Original:
Desperate panhandler: Lady, I haven’t eaten in four days.
Rich lady: Young man, you must learn to force yourself.
Switched:
Panhandler: Lady, I haven’t eaten in four days. Can you help me.
Rich Lady: Certainly. I recommend The Ritz, a wonderful restaurant on 14th Street.

Take time to practice switching jokes. Beside being fun, it will expand your story file.

Third
Try to personalize and localize your stories. Instead of saying “a man” and “a city” give the man and the city names that the audience recognizes. If you can use their locale and people in the audience, so much the better. Work yourself into the joke as though you saw it happen, and if you can become the fall guy, better still. They’ll love you for it.
Fourth
When your joke has quotes, deliver them in the style of the jokes above. Do not say, “He’s all right,” said Tommy, “But there’s lots of things we needed more”. That’s OK in writing, but in speaking it slows down the story.

With a practice you can make amusing stories funny ones.

© 2006 Cy Eberhart

It happens all the time: A tense, stressful situation at work, then an offhand remark, followed by laughter and perhaps a knowing nod. The tension is reduced. Such spontaneous humor can maintain morale or it can reinforce feelings of despair and helplessness. It all depends.

Working as a hospital chaplain, I often wondered about the spontaneous humor generated in this stressful environment: areas like the emergency unit, intensive care, neurosurgery, and coronary care. The flippant observations, verbal shorthand expressions that are quickly understood by those sharing the experiences
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People acquainted with such settings know that this humor has a distinct flavor. Simply stated it’s crude, so crude that it is “for staff ears only.” Its conveyors are fully aware of its offensiveness, should it be overheard by others. More often than not the humor victimizes the patients and, when taken at face value, it conveys insensitivity,even though this is never, never the intent of the purveyors of such humor.

Actually, my interest was more on what wasn’t said than what was. I had some understanding of the need of what I then called “negative humor.” But the glaring absence of positive humor, how come? I reasoned this way: if the humor inherent in these settings was negative, then some essential quality was absent. What that was or how to express it, I had no idea.

Then sometime later, while examining American frontier humor, I found similar dynamics but from a more comprehensive viewpoint. This viewpoint gave me a systematic way to consider this negative-positive humor phenomenon.

My categories now became “coping” and “hoping” humor. Here are examples of two different humorous treatments of a single theme. This gives an “experiential” basis for understanding the distinctions I make between these two.

The theme is aging. Aging is a fact of life, one that has demoralizing possibilities. The following examples are from contemporary birthday cards:

Feeling old? Don’t. We know someone your age…and on good days he can still feed himself.

Another in this same vein:
(Woman on the telephone) Your birthday today? Really? How old? No?…Have a nice yesterday.

Then this one:
Happy birthday
It’s reassuring to know that, while growing older, worn out cells are being cast off and replaced by new ones…Think of it as a giant garage sale going an all over your body.

Now the first two are examples of “coping” humor. This humor laughs at the hopelessness in human life. The third is humor celebrating the hope in human life.

It was two theories advanced to explain the creativity and vitality of the frontier humor that suggested these distinctions. One came from Mark Twain’s biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine. He understood frontier humor to be the result of despair, explaining it this way, “…all frontiersmen were obliged to be laughing philosophers in order to survive the stress of its warfare. The fight was so desperate, to take it seriously was to surrender. Women laughed that they might not weep, men laughed when they could no longer swear.” This theory has many adherents. But historians Bernard De Voto and Max Eastman advanced another. According to it, optimism and enthusiasm were the dynamics of frontier humor, not despair. Hope, not hopelessness, was its underlying factor.

In considering these saw no need to choose between them for the human condition embraces both. Hopelessness and hope are both realities of human life. For example, mortality is a fact. It is therefore hopeless to try to live forever. But there is hope for achieving the fulfillment of life. This too is reality.
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Laughing at the hopeless is what I call “coping” humor. An illustration from frontier life, a story inspired by the successive grasshopper plagues that continually threatened the settlers. Sometimes they were so thick their weight broke trees when they lighted on them.

A settler was plowing his field. He went to his house for a drink of cold water from his well. While pumping he saw a heavy cloud of grasshoppers drop over the spot where he’d left his team of horses. He ran back as fast as he could. When he got here the grasshoppers had eaten his team and his harnesses and were pitching the horses’ shoes to see which got the farmer.

Coping humor, then, does not build morale. Rather it generates an energy that allows a person to “hang in there.” To become refreshed enough to have another go at the impossible, or in our terms, at the hopeless. But to restate: it doesn’t free one from the demoralizing facts or from the awareness of the continued presence of the hopelessness in our lives.

In hoping humor we find different factors at work. Compare this next frontier story to the one about the grasshoppers.

A Texas ranger and his Indian scout were riding across the sand hills in a fierce wind storm. To their surprise they saw lying on top of one of the sand dunes a man’s hat. They dismounted and the ranger picked it up. Underneath he found a man’s head. Frantically the ranger and the scout began scratching away the sand from the man’s eyes, ears, mouth. The man said, “Get a shovel, I’m on horseback.”

In this, laughter at the man’s helplessness in the face of nature’s overwhelming forces is not reinforced. Rather, the humorous element is the indomitableness of the human spirit. It is a humor of hope.

Thinking in terms of mood rather than content, contrast TV’s Archie Bunker in All in the Family with the old Bill Cosby Show. Their basic treatments, premises and foci are not the same. Audiences found a different “feel” in their laughter. All in the Family fell into the coping variety while The Cosby Show into the hoping type. I would also include Norman Rockwell’s paintings, and Garrison Keillor’s “Lake Woebegon” stories in the hoping type.

This point should be underscored: A humor that will sustain spiritual and emotional well being require a dynamic relationship between the hoping and coping. The two need each other.

What I’m saying is that coping humor alone cannot sustain the human spirit. When it becomes the predominate fare, this humor, in time, turns back on itself. It become sarcastic, cynical, destructive and even vindictive for it anticipates nothing but the hopeless.

Nor can hoping humor go it alone. What’s it to do with the hells of life; those times when all that can be heard is the wailing and the gnashing of teeth? When life is just too much for us with no end in sight, when darkness comes but the enemy will not break off. In these times a Rockwell painting or a “Woebegon” story just won’t cut it. Surely there is sound reason for the second- most-used expression in church liturgy, “God have mercy.”
(c) 2006 Cy Eberhart
Author’s note: This article is a revised version of his Keynote Address at the International Conference on Humor at Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona

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Your sense of humor is the lubricant to keep your morale up and running, no matter what. But this is so only if you choose to use it.

Here is an example.

I visited a patient in the hospital where I was chaplain. Recovery from his surgery was going slower than expected. The pain, confinement, and his worry about the possibility of more surgery left him discouraged. Many friends sent him get-well greetings. and while he appreciated being remembered, he had a hard time with the so-called humorous cards.

The sentiments were simply out of synch with the way he felt. He got the message that his friends were insensitive to his situation. I listened as he talked about this Then I asked, “Who is your favorite humorist ?” (I’ll explain the reasons for this later)
He looked at me, puzzled but he thought for a moment. Then naming Alan Alda’s character role in the TV sitcom M.A.S.H, said, “Hawkeye Pierce, Why?”

“If Hawkeye were in this same situation as you, what do you think he would say or do?”

He became quiet. His brow furrowed as he looked up at the ceiling in silence. Slowly he gave words to his thoughts. “Well, he’d wonder about these people, how insensitive they were. Then he’d probably get a little angry.”

Indeed anger crept into his voice as he continued, “What’s with them,” as he began to get into Hawkeye’s character. “This is no picnic you know. They must think I’m taking a cushy vacation…”

He stopped. His pursed lips slipped into a sly smile, his mind working. Then looking directly at me he said, “If this was happening to Hawkeye, he would send these people cards that read, ‘Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here!’”
His mood change was pronounced, apparent and immediate. He laughed, “Hey! That’s what I’m going to do.”

And indeed he did. His wife bought him several wish-you-were-here greeting cards, and he sent them to selected friends…along with his own comments.

Now take a close look at this. Nothing about his situation had changed – except his attitude. Excitement, enthusiasm, and anticipation replaced despair. Here’s the point. Before the Hawkeye episode he viewed his total situation as discouraging and depressing There was the pain, the slow recovery, the forced dependency that confinement brings, plus the fear of more surgery.

Initially he did not focus on the whole situation, but only on one narrow aspect of it – his friends’ insensitivity to the realities of his situation. This was his target. But when his sense of humor kicked in, it influenced everything else. As Lawrence Peter, of the famed Peter Principle, once said, “Humor itself doesn’t do anything, but it does make it possible for many good things to happen.”

In the twinkling of an eye humor changes your perception of your circumstances…no matter what these might be. In that instant the tensions that clogs your imagination dissolve. They flow away leaving your free and open. Your senses of humor literally transforms the event.

Part of the good news is that everyone has a sense of humor. It is part of human nature’s built-in stuff. It’s standard equipment and comes with the biology. As Psychiatrist William F. Fry, Jr. said, “Your are fated to have a sense of humor.”

But a challenge goes with this gift of life. One’s sense of humor is as individualistic as one’s finger prints. What may seem humorous to one person is not necessarily so to another. That was the reason for asking the patient about his favorite humorist. That character, in this instance Hawkeye, reflected his particular senses of humor, his own unique comic viewpoint, and through the image of Hawkeye he activated his viewpoint and benefited from it.

Your sense of humor is always present, ready and able to keep your morale up and running in any and all circumstances. But it will only do so if invited. It’s up to you to do the inviting.

© 2006 Cy Eberhart