Failing at Funny
I suck at humor. Everything out of my head these days seems to be serious and past attempts at writing funny stories have failed miserably.
For example, everything in my Medium draft queue at the moment is serious.
Topics include:
- A short story about lying in a society constructed around the exaggerated marketing of three and half minute mac n cheese. Scientific research has proven it takes another 60 seconds when including prep time. This huge marketing lie resulted in a class action lawsuit yet most lying politicians get elected by happy microwavable mac n cheese-eating voters all the time.
- I drafted a serious poem about my personal fear that strangers would think I was a dangerous person after I grew my first beard at the age of 56. The irony is that those deranged thoughts were there for 55 years before they started judging me with facial hair.
- There is an unfinished essay about labels that are assigned to people, many times to demonize them for gains. Examples of this occurring include Native Americans, terrorists, sexual orientation of people, and recently, the bearded middle age white dude (RBMAWD) being judged when passing by strangers on the street.
My Medium feed is full of serious articles based on my interest. Just this morning while scrolling through I was struck by the phrase “ear wax” in the title of a story which I found interesting versus funny.
Again, a serious story written from the point of view of a real-life Ear Nose and Throat (ENT) doctor about ear wax, or as she points out “ear fat”, as some around the world refer to it.
As I read the story, my mind started to wander down the path of marketing. Those advertising executives must’ve understood the human psyche around the addictive thrill of finding huge chunks of ear wax, fat, butter, cheese, or crack on the end of the cotton swab and the emotional defeat of finding nothing. We do this knowing all too well that 4 out of 5 ENTs recommend not doing it as it pushes the ear junk deeper into the canal. The result is we use another swab to double-check, thereby always needing more cotton swabs.
It is all quite genius, but still not funny.
I wrote a “funny” story once about a joke I told when working in a hospital. Using humor about a cow with no legs to cheer up a patient who later informed me that she had no more legs was shameful. Showing personal courage in my writing to share that uncomfortable situation got only a couple of reads and only a few claps, mostly from the editor of the publication which sometimes seems insincere.
I guess in the end, I will never be as funny as other humor writers out there but hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
If you thought this story was funny then I have nothing else to offer you so go buy some other humorist a coffee.
