Sense of Humor

Some people don’t have a sense of humor. It’s to be assumed, they don’t know they lack this important personality trait. But it does no good to enlighten them, for they may make an attempt to be funny, and it always falls flat. One of them may demonstrate what he thinks is humor with a story that might be funny and clever spoken by someone else on the spur of the moment, but it appears this guy has worked hard at planning the presentation, even dressing up for it, while expecting praise and laughter. But all that preparation is obvious, causing us to conclude there are no more stories up his sleeve, and he is defeated by the lack of response and seldom tries again.

Humor is more of a cleverness than funniness, with the cleverness providing the fun. How does one acquire cleverness? I don’t think one does. It seems one is born with it, or not. It goes hand-in-hand with knowledge and as the child grows in knowledge, the sense of humor grows with it. But don’t all children grow in knowledge? Of course, but by different rates, in different settings, and with different genes. While some will be clever, some will be corny, and some will be blah, in that department. Setting for this growth is more important than realized at first glance. Humor is more likely to spring from a large family than from an “only child.” Published and filmed stories bear out this premise, with several children in a given family’s figuring out fun-plots to fool their parents to an only child’s cleverness often being related to evil-plots. These two aspects grow as children grow. But it certainly does not mean all those born in the “only child” group are evil, or even self-centered, but often just lacking in humor for whatever reason. And, just as true, all large families are not blessed with humor, and may even have a “black sheep” among the herd.

So I imagine some of my readers do not understand my humor sprinkled throughout these blogs, a word here, a phrase there, or perhaps the whole episode. But like the Royals with several names, as in Arthur George Henry Philip, my name is ____ ____ ____ Humor ____. Got it? Have a nice day!

♥