What’s Funny?

Laughter is what proves our humanity. – Garrison Keilor

So two patients are sharing a hospital room. The first patient says to the second, "What are you in for?" The second patient says, "I’m getting a circumcision." The first patient says, "Darn! I had that done
when I was born and I couldn’t walk for a year."
Whether you think this joke is funny depends on everything from culture to language to age to intelligence and even to whether you’re male or female.
There are certain words which some of us find funny, at least in English. One of my favorites is "kumquat." It’s hard for me to say this word without laughing…

Frankly, I wasn’t even certain what a kumquat was until I went to the world’s favorite new resource, Google. So here’s your multiple choice for today. A kumquat is:
A. a vegetable
B. a fruit
C. a large-winged parrot ("Look, Alice. A flock of kumquats is landing on the lake!").
The answer is "B," as you can, of course, see in the photo (above). But this doesn’t begin to explain why the name of this fruit falls so comically off the tongue. Part of it could be the hard double-k sounds. But another word, a vegetable, that I find funny has no "K" in it. It’s rutabaga. According to comedians, a third funny word is cucumber.
I’m sure a good comedian could built a whole routine out of these three words. As for the rest of us, we can gain a lot of enjoyment by simply integrating funny images into our lives.
Someone once told me that the way to feel less nervous in front of an audience is to imagine everybody in their underwear. This is because audiences look so intimidating to anxious public speakers. Personally, I think it’s funnier to imagine everyone with a rutabaga on their head.
There’s not much funny in the delivery of charity care. It’s terribly serious business. Yet the best caregivers I know have learned how to laugh. They know that humor is a crucial element of good health and balance. And that it’s essential to the quality of our lives.

-Erie Chapman

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Categories: Meditations

Tags: Humor Kumquat Rutabaga

4 responses to “What’s Funny?”

Karen York

June 20, 2007 at 8:42 am

I grew up with kumquats and their sweet/tart flavor is as memorable as the name. A valuable pearl I learned and pass on to others is “to laugh often and cry well”. I appreciate this sequence on laughter and humor because we often miss the fun in our world, sometimes resting in the name of a fruit.

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liz Wessel

June 20, 2007 at 9:31 am

Humor can be experienced as light and airy and connect us as one, laughter as a letting go into an easy flow, free of worry.
An early memory that comes to mind is when I was a girl of thirteen. Our dear next-door neighbor Jimmy Schultz had died. His wife Hilda, raw with grief sat with dad crying as dad shared in her immense sadness. I stood nearby quietly absorbing all. Energy began to shift as the reminiscing began. Soon, dad and Hilda were laughing hysterically about a calendar dad had given Jimmy; one Hilda had despised. Each month held a cartoon caricature of a naked fat lady with a bit of animal fur as partial covering, and some silly caption beneath each picture. Their laughter was warm, loving, intimate, and so comforting. My father’s bliss was in his relationships with people. I feel fortunate to have grown up immersed in his world of people, friends, laughter, and tears.

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Tom Knowles-Bagwell

June 20, 2007 at 12:57 pm

I remember sitting in a small room in a funeral home. There was me, my mother, my two sisters, my mother’s best friend, and my father’s body laying in a casket.
There were a lot of tears, of course. But it wasn’t long before, Gloria, my mother’s friend (who was also the Director of Nursing at a small rural hospital in Texas) began to tell stories of the early years of their marriages. It wasn’t long before all of us were doubled over with laughter. I believe my father would have wanted us telling those stories and laughing. But we had to be careful not to be overheard by others in the funeral home.
Yes, laughter. I do love it.

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Jan Keeling

June 20, 2007 at 2:14 pm

This is so true (that humor is essential in our lives). I know many relationships–perhaps all relationships!–that would not survive without a sense of humor.

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