Posted 4:52 AM by Blah blah

You Laugh More When You Care (Humor)

You can tell my life is so exciting when I wake up at 4:30 am, and my first impulse is to blog. This blog is like a hungry baby that keeps crying "WAAAAH!" I just hope when I grow old and senile, Blog, that you will remember all the thankless hours I wasted on you. I hope you will remember your daddy Raymond in his old age and make sure to wipe the apple sauce off of his chin when you're done feeding him. And please change his diaper.

Why do I love that TV show Frasier? Many reasons.

A main reason is it's not a stupid gag-fest. Many times Frasier is exposing his heart to someone or admitting what a jackass he just was, and I really feel a poignancy, a bittersweet connection with the character. The show has such warm, touching characters and serious moments amidst the humor that it's as much drama as comedy. I feel like I've stumbled onto a PBS play and keep wondering when they're gonna cut to a pledge break. I love how the humor is driven by character, not contrived one-liners.

One summer as a teenager, I worked as a counselor at a camp for disabled people. It's one of the best jobs I've ever had, emotionally. We took care of autistic folks, blind folks, epileptics, Down's Syndrome kids, sweet angels and spoiled brats---you name it. One fellow counselor was this 30-year-old British guy named Colin Ferguson, with slightly balding brown hair and a wry expression. He looked like an "adult" in our group of teenagers, yet he was the biggest CLOWN of our group! Like someone out of that British sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf. The very first time I met him, we'd all gathered in the cafeteria to get acquainted.

Our leader Debbie said, "It's Colin's birthday!" Suddenly Colin leapt from his seat and jumped on a table. Two guys jumped up and started chasing him furiously around the room. Colin ducked under tables next to our feet, spilled chairs over, and made a hell of a racket trying to escape. Eventually the guys caught him, lifted him from both ends, and carried him out of the cafeteria. New folks like me were shocked, our jaws hanging. I'd thought the disabled kids were the "patients," but now I wondered if the lunatics were running the asylum!

What a way to break the ice. Of course it was all a joke. The camp had this tradition that whomever had a birthday that day had to be chased and carried out of the room.

So we all loved Colin. He was a man-boy who could act like a silly goof when the mood was too serious. And he did it for the disabled folks and for us. He really loved them. He loved this job. He burned with devotion to his campers. Every little thing an autistic kid might struggle to get right, Colin was there as head cheerleader, head personal goofball.

One time we had a talent show. All the campers had to get up and show off something. One guy tried to "play" the piano, and he ending up going "poink poink poink...pink!" randomly bonking the keys. I think I acted in a silly skit. I dressed as a woman or something, with blue lipstick. Colin had been whooping it up for every camper who performed, cheering in the front row and slamming his hand on the table in applause. Then we had a break. They showed a video of that classic 1950s TV comedy I Love Lucy. It was one of my favorite episodes, "Job Switching," in which Lucy and her best friend Ethel take a job at a candy factory to raise money. (You can watch that little scene here on the Net.) The funniest scene is where Lucy and Ethel are at the candy conveyer belt, ready to package the candy. At first they grab the candy fine and do a good job. Then the belt starts moving faster and faster, and they end up having to stuff the chocolates in their mouths, their hats, and in their chests.

I noticed Colin did not laugh at ALL during this scene. He kinda stared at the TV, exhausted. But no laugh at a classic moment from a classic comedy.

Then the campers got up and starting showing their "talent" again. One boy did some aerobics. One girl got up and sang really off-key. Suddenly, Colin was jolted erect, whistling with pinkies in the corners of his mouth, clapping his hands raw, bellowing "YAAAAAAYYYYY!" at every camper. For each act, he laughed heartily and found it the funniest thing in the world.

I remember thinking, "Hah! It's weird he had zippo reaction to Lucille Ball, but when Becky sings off-key, he loves it!" Then I realized something. That most of the time when we laugh, it's not because someone just told us a great joke. It's mostly because we care about someone, we really like him, and he does something that reveals himself as he typically is. His words, put coldly on a page, may feel flat to someone who doesn't know him. Yet because he's our loveable buddy or crazy Uncle Don, we can't HELP but laugh. We laugh to show support, to show we care about someone. It's communication. It's cheerleading.

Colin showed me the perfect example of that on that day. Which is why character-driven humor, as in Frasier, is the most effective humor. It's because the character brands himself so strongly on your heart and reveals something so true about the world, that you love him, and you laugh.

Last year, researchers from the U. of Hertfordshire in England did a study called LaughLab to find the "world's funniest joke." They read and helped rate over 40,000 jokes. These professors must be utter bores because their winning joke barely makes me crack a grin.

The whole idea of somehow logically narrowing out the "funniest" joke is dumb. Humor based on characters we love and situations to which we relate is much funnier than any one-liner a Vegas comic can write.

We must care before we laugh.