I’m not sure there is a more welcome talent than being able to make people laugh.
It’s not quite as wonderful an ability as it seems. Comedian Gilbert Gottfried once said it was a lie when women claim a sense of humor is the most attractive quality women look for in a man. If that was true, he said, Alan King and Carrot Top would be beating the women off with sticks.
I’ve always believed what they really mean is they like men who can laugh at themselves.
I have always been someone who can make people laugh, and I have the abilityto think funny on the spur of the moment. I never really thought about it until it was too late, but I would have loved to try standup comedy.
I think I would have been more of a storyteller than someone who tossed off one-liners. I’ve had four or five favorites over the years, none of which were ones I thought up. Here’s a recent one I really enjoy:
A teacher asked her third-grade class to describe what they want their life to be when they grew up. Johnny was first.
“I want to be a billionaire businessman,” he said. “I’ll have houses all over the world, great cars great airplanes. I’ll find a woman I love and make her my whore. I’ll buy her a penthouse apartment, giver her $10 million and credit cards with unlimited limits that I’ll pay off. All she has to do in return is give me great sex every night.”
The teacher smiled in embarrassment. “That’s very interesting,” she said. “And how about you, Susie?”
Susie smiled. “I want to be Johnny’s whore.”
Then there’s one of my early favorites from half a century ago:
A young archeologist has just finished college and is on his way to a dig in Egypt. He is met at the airport in Cairo and told it’s a two-hour drive out into the desert to the dig.
They drive and drive and pass through a small town before driving half an hour and arriving at the dig. The young man points out how remote the location seems and asks what they do for fun when they’re not working.
“We work hard all week, but on Friday evenings, we have kegs of beer sent in and all get drunk.”
“Oh, I don’t drink,” he said.
“On Saturdays we only work half a day. Then we get cleaned up and ride into the town half an hour away and spend the evening in a brothel.”
The young man frowns. “That doesn’t sound like much fun either.”
“You’re not gay, are you?”
“Certainly not,” the young man says.
“Well, you won’t like Sundays either.”
I have plenty of others, but I’ll finish with one more:
A man and his wife have been married 25 years and return to their hometown where they first fell in love. Much has changed, but driving in the countryside, they see a familiar setting. A few shade trees and a wire fence behind them. The husband and wife both realize that the first time they made love, they were braced against the fence.
They decide to recapture old times, and before soon they are going at it. The woman is reacting like she hasn’t in years, screaming and scratching and bucking. After they are finished, the husband looks at her in surprise.
“Wow, you weren’t like that 25 years ago!”
“That fence wasn’t electrified 25 years ago.”
I’m not fond of the genre known recently as Dad Jokes, but I like the old Australian jokes about Dad and Dave. One bonus joke to wrap it up:
Dad and Dave are out walking and they see a dingo licking its own genitals. Dave turns to Dad and says, “I wish I could do that.”
Dad replies, “You’d better pet him first or he might bite you.”