OK, everybody off the train. We're going to get serious about funny. I never liked Bob Hope because he just told jokes other people had written for him. I found exploding laughter watching Johnathan Winters. He could just stand there doing nothing but moving his head and shifting his eyes and I was on the floor. My search for laughter has been a favorite pursuit all my life.
When I was 10 and 12, like every other kid in America, I loved the comics. Who knew if I had kept that original Superman in pristine condition, it would have made my declining years more comfortable? But my favorite 'zine was a monthly called 1,000 jokes. Ten cents for a collection of one- or two-liners that actually counted out to be about 100 basic jokes told in a hundred different ways. Fine with me. But an incident in the sixth grade really did put a notch in the tree of my life- trail regarding humor (I wonder if my sister Mary will remember this since in the little country grade school we attended, two grades were in each room so that every other year we shared a class room?).
One day our teacher, Miss Hensley, introduced an exercise she must have picked up from some Sociology class in college. She had every student in the two grades take a sheet of paper and write down three qualities they would look for in the person who might become their husband or their wife. She then collected the papers and had a boy and a girl go to the black board and list the results as she read each paper. Then she had a class discussion regarding the answers.
My take on the exercise was that every single girl, without exception, listed a variation of "sense of humor" or "funny."
Oh, look...I think I've found a key to the candy store?
