Learning how to laugh
I wonder how I ever learned to laugh. When I was a child comedy was rare; nothing from my parents nor my siblings. I have my own funny bone that hardly count has humor. We did have a television with a single station populated for the main part by detectives and doctors and people on horseback. Cowboys. Much ado about nothing. However there was that one man I think they called him Red. He dressed oddly. He had a whole menagerie of characters. I was particularly drawn to Gertrude and Heathcliff which apparently were seagulls and I knew seagulls. They weren’t funny but his were. I think you can still watch him if you look around the Net. My textbooks in school again had nothing. We knew a lot about math and world geography and countries that we would never visit but no laughter, no jokes, even the teachers seemed to be devoid of laughter. Those were sadder times I guess.
As I grew older, things improved. We had a laugh in which spawned a whole series of humor jokes throughout high school. And now, the world has changed. I can have comedy all day all night. So many unknown names. If you take the time to listen you can get laughs. My funny bone has become a surplus object.
Just as an aside, we learned that Shakespeare was not a funny man. Yes he had comedies but they were as dark as his dramas and other whatever he did. I cannot recall a single giggle from Hamlet.
