Comedy: A Double-edged Sword

NaQuan Harding

1/5/11

Gold English

Comedy: A Double-edged Sword

There I am, sitting in a cramped room with the school’s principle. It’s my interview before I’m actually accepted into the middle school. My attitude could make or break my chances of getting in. I have to maintain an acceptable attitude and stay calm. Here goes.

“So, NaQuan, what makes you want to come to this school?” asks the teacher.

“Oh, you know…I was thinking about it,” I joked. “I mean, I like the idea of fun staff, friendly students, no uniform code, and a half-day each week, but what really had me hooked were the school vests. Those things look awesome!”

She chuckles.

“Funny. You’re quite the goofball, aren’t you?”

“I try.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll be right at home. Now you know you’ll have to work hard, right?”

“Bring in all the work you want. It can’t be much compared to the chores my mom makes me do.”

Et cetera, et cetera, insert funny comment here. That’s usually how my conversations go.  It’s like what James Baldwin once wrote, “Language, incontestably, reveals the speaker” He couldn’t be more right. The way you speak can say a lot about the kind of person you are, sometimes more so than your actions can. I’ve always been aware of this fact, and made sure I never rubbed anyone the wrong way. How? By always being the funny guy. The comic. The class clown. The goofball. If it involves comedy, that’s the kind of person I’ll be. Nothing says friendship like making jokes about it.

            If anything, I’m always trying to keep a funny attitude, preferably a sarcastic one, but not so much that I look like a jerk. Humor has always been my thing. It makes people laugh and keeps them on their good side. Whenever I first meet someone, I always try to come off as the funny guy. It’s an excellent way to break the ice, raises my chances of making early friends, and leaves a good first impression. It’s my specialty. Once I make someone even giggle, I know I’ve left my mark. It’s funny because I don’t make up my own jokes, but feed off of the situation to make my jokes. It works because it’s unexpected, but still related, and of course, funny. But not everything goes according to plan. There are times and places for jokes, and times and places to be serious. Churches, funerals, boot camps, these are places where jokes aren’t welcome, and they warn you that. But of course, I took these warnings about as seriously as I do 2012, and joked away. And let me tell you, when the consequences hit, they hit hard.

Luckily, I’ve never been to boot camp, and out of the two times I went to church, I don’t recall making any jokes, mostly because I was sleeping. But I won’t deny; there have been times when I was in the red on the jerk spectrum. On several occasions, I made the mistake of getting personal with my jokes, usually bringing family into my jokes. In other words, my jokes came off as insults. That doesn’t make someone like you, that makes them hate you, and when they hate you, they don’t laugh. That’s a big no-no when you’re trying to be funny.  I sometimes feel like I have no control of my sarcasm sometimes, and it pops up at the most inconvenient times. Like, for example, at a funeral.

The sister of a really good friend of mine died and I went to the funeral with him. Now, he was very familiar with my comedic nature, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt if I tried to cheer him up a little bit. I said, “At least she can’t annoy you anymore.” Again, I made a joke about family, and at the worst possible time to boot. Needless to say, that was a stupid thing to do. Very stupid. Extremely stupid. Obviously, he took that in a way I didn’t want him to, and that left a heavy blow in our friendship and left a bad mark. I looked like a cold, heartless jerk. It took months of me apologizing, begging, and even doing his work for him before he could even talk to me again, and even more groveling after that to restore the friendship.  That taught me the lesson of choosing the proper time and proper place to joke around.

I’m not a bad person, and I’m not a boring person. Being funny helps dispel those thoughts when I meet people. It’s always worked for me in the past, and will keep working in the future. Like I said, it’s my specialty. I don’t think I could be anything else. I’m not anyone else. I’m not the cool guy. Not the mysterious guy. Definitely not the tough guy. I’m just the funny guy, and that’s the way I like it.