Using Humor

Richard Pryor Image via Wikipedia

Kahil Gibran the Persian author of The Prophet, wrote, “Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.”

Mel Brooks had a slightly different take, “Tragedy is when I get a papercut. Comedy is when you fall into an open manhole.”

William Shakespeare in Hamlet refers to it: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Or this: “Life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think.” from Jean de la Bruyere

And this formula from Carol Burnet: “Comedy is tragedy plus time.”

A good friend of mine, Gail DeLay, who passed away a few years ago, was a gifted cartoonist and a humorous speaker. She and I nearly got thrown out of a session at the National Speakers Association convention one year because the speaker was promoting “leave behinds.” Items, like handouts, that you “left behind” after a speech. These helped people remember you, remember your message, and could perhaps lead to other bookings…

I mentioned it first to her, but she drew the cartoon… a table at the door to a room piled high with butts. And a sign above that said: Leave Behinds.

OK. I admit, this wasn’t and isn’t hilarious, but after two full days of people talking about the “serious” and “important” business of speaking… we were primed to giggle at anything. This definitely falls into the YHBT category of humor (You Had To Be There.) But illustrates Gail’s gift, of cutting through to the funny.

One of my favorite cartoons by Gail showed a man standing before St Peter at the pearly Gates of Heaven. St Peter is reviewing the man’s file and says “Hmm… a professional speaker and humorist?… Gee! It’s too bad you died. It would have made a great story.”

Richard Pryor created some of his funniest material out of the pain of drug addiction. After he recovered from setting himself on fire while freebasing cocaine, he added this to his act: “If you are running down the street with your face on fire, people will get out of your way.”

I am not suggesting that you have to get addicted to drugs, almost kill yourself or survive some peril in order to be funny. In fact, most people who survive these events don’t make anything humorous out of the experience at all.

But if you look at what you laugh at now, at the things that happened way back then. If you look at what is funny at class reunions. And at what gets brought up at family holiday get-togethers. At one time some of it was painful.

So give yourself a little time, as Carol Burnet suggests. Look within the pain as Kahlil Gibran reminds us. And we all can’t be Shakespeare, but his advice holds: good or bad - thinking makes it so.

More about mining your past next time.

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and in honor of Gail DeLay, leave your behinds at the door!

Dixie Chicks in Austin, TX. Photo by Ron Baker. Image via Wikipedia

Being new to this “tagging” I actually replied to AmyOops email with a question about what all of this was. Then I checked her blog later and found out what the fuss was about.

It seems I have been “tagged” with the 7 things meme and I have to post seven things you don’t know about me, or risk being banished to some far corner of the net where dial-up is the fastest access you can get, and the only pages you can see are all from yahooligans. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, especially myself. So here goes:

1. I performed for many years in an improvisational/sketch comedy group called the Guava Bomblets.
2. I started getting gray hair in eighth grade
3. My first car was a 1963 Volkswagen Beetle. My dad traded a golf cart for it.
4. I have been published in Reader’s Digest.
5. In college I was part of a group that opened for The Pointer Sisters.
6. The Dixie Chicks opened for the Guava Bomblets one New Year’s Eve
7. I have taken something over 16 Defensive Driving Classes. I get birthday greetings every year from Defensive Driving dot com.

Now according to the rules as I understand them. I can ask Dad the Dude, Mike at LiveLife365, Eve at That’s Funny Because, CoC at That Guy Over There, Mike at Plain Ol’ Mike, Kathy at The Junk Drawer, and DebD at Debbie Does Drivel, to also expose seven secrets about their wasted youth and sordid (though interesting) lives.

Next on Using Humor we discuss mining your past for humor material. Hmmm. where did I get that idea?

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Image via Wikipedia

In my last post, Have You Heard The One About...  I said I would modify a story as an example.

Here is the original as best I remember it:

A man goes to the produce section of a grocery stoe and asks the clerk where the strawberries are located.

“I’m sorry sir, Strawberries are out of season.”

The man looks around, and asks again, “Are you sure there aren’t any strawberries? Maybe in the back? Leftover?”

“No sir. We have no strawberries. We haven’t had strawberries for awhile, They are out of season.”

The man wanders around the store for a few minutes. He really wanted some strawberries and decided to try one more time. He saw a clerk leaning over a counter and thought maybe this one might know something the other clerk didn’t. “Excuse me. Where are the strawberries?”

When the clerk stood up, the man realized it was the same one as before. The clerk turned, recognized the man, and through a tight lipped smile said, “Let me ask you a question OK? If you take the “el” out of bagel. What do you have?”

The man thought a moment and replied “Bag.”

“Exactly. Now if you take the “band” out of bandage, what have you got?”

“Age!”

“Correct again. Now if you take the “f***” out of strawberries, what have you got?”

The man thought a moment and said “There’s no “f***” in strawberries.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! There’s no f***ing strawberries.”

OK. the first change was to replace f*** with “stink.” Now the story is G rated.

Then I could use it as an illustration perhpas of how we can be blinded by our desire and deny reality. Or how we sometimes listen, but we don’t hear. Or as an example of how to handle a customer service situation. It could even be a an example of embarrassing a customer - or, what not to do.

I could, and many times did, tell it as if I was the man looking for strawberries, because the safest target is always yourself. I usually added emotion and sense rich descriptions, about strawberry shortcake, whipped cream, etc. I would sometimes talk about frozen strawberries and how they just weren’t the same.

If the audience was a grocer, or any sort of retail. I could make the clerk one of the principles in the company, or a manager everyone knew. Or, I could make myself the clerk and one of the audience as the customer, a manager or the CEO perhaps.

If the audience sold Toyotas, the customer could be looking for a Nissan. If they sold hamburgers he could ask for a taco. The clerk could be a weatherman being asked when it was going to rain.

The best stories lend themselves to multiple interpretations.

A variation on this story, concerns a duck going to a feed store to ask for “duck feed,” after the third visit the clerk threatens to nail the duck’s feet to the floor if he comes in and asks for “duck feed” again. The fourth time the duck first asks if the feed store has any nails. When the clerk replies “No,” the duck asks for … “duck feed” again.

And I might finish off this entire segment with the story about a retail general manager who left to become a police officer… because “the customer is always wrong!”

If you need help modifying your stories for your audience, contact me.

If you have a favorite story to share, please do so in comments. Your thoughts and suggestions are always welcome.

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