Did you hear about the actor who fell through the floorboards?
Wait for it…
He was just going through a stage!
Ha! I’ll admit, I giggled at that one. This begs the question, when was the last time you laughed? How about the last time you laughed so hard it hurt? There’s nothing quite as stress-relieving as a good laugh. Often, the right joke at the right time can make an unpleasant experience better. Even hearing someone laughing, especially if it’s sincere delighted laughter, has the power to make you smile and laugh too.
Having a good sense of humor not only makes getting through the day easier, but it’s also a sign of higher intelligence. It takes higher brain functions to be able to make or understand a joke. A joke, when broken down to its most basic elements, is a story or a situation where the elements don’t quite fit the way they’re supposed to. Most jokes tend to play on words and take full advantage of puns and double entendres. If you’ve always loved wordplay and jokes, then congratulations, you’ve got a great mind for words and their meanings.
The more important skill in telling a joke is not in the joke itself, but in finding the right joke for the right situation. This requires a level of social and cultural awareness that can be tricky to pin down at times. It also requires a level of self-awareness and confidence that many might find challenging, as many jokes are told at the expense of the teller themselves.
Share a laugh today
Let’s start with something fun and easy. When was the last time you learned a new joke? There are countless websites and social forums that have an untold number of jokes you haven’t heard yet. Next time you’re stuck waiting somewhere, look one up. The next time you’re spending time with friends and/or family, share it with them. This works great during meals and can often turn into a joke fest where everyone tries to one-up each other.
That time I nailed it, accidentally
The best humor is often something that happens by accident. The elements of a joke show up at the right time in the right place when everyone’s in the right mood. This was no exception. I was at a writer’s conference and rooming with my two writer friends. It had been a super long day and we were so tired that we were a little loopy as we wound down for the night. As the evening progressed, things got funnier and funnier. As we were comparing our different nighttime rituals, one asked, “What creative things do you do before bed?” meaning did I read, watch tv, listen to music, or do something else? What I meant to say was, “I guess I’m not very creative, I just go to bed at the same time as my hubby.” What came out was, “We aren’t very creative in bed.”
And everybody just died.
What’s worse is that with something like that, no matter how hard you try to fix it, it just makes it worse. My ribs still hurt thinking about it.
