Ever laugh at a joke you don't get? Or worse, one that you do get, and don't think is that funny? Well, if your conscience chided you on being such a wuss, don't worry - you are not alone. I somehow think that 80%(just a guesstimate, no statistical data to back this up) of the people rolling down the aisles holding their guts for fear of them spilling out, do so out of some fear perception. The fear of course is that someone would accuse you of being dense. Naturally some of these times, you really haven't got it, and are really dense, and that's OK really. It the other situation that makes me go all pukey inside.
A situation like the one that I'm about to describe is common enough for me to suspect that all of us have gone through it at least once in a lifetime. Our division head was making an appearance in town, one of his regular-checkin-on-ya-know-ya-exist visits. This usually means the sacrifice of a weekend to the altar of strategic kowtow. So, the overwhelming feeling that dominated that morning is one of deep resentment. I've always said its easier to work on a 6-day week if you didn't know its brother - the 5-day week. Once acquainted with the latter, a few changes to the mentalities of the labor force have been noted, even documented. Fridays become a lot more cheerful and bearable, Mondays a lot more harder to accept, and attendance on Mondays takes a dive. And when the odd Saturday puts you to work, most people just curl up and scowl. If you're in a company that offers the mandatory peace offering in the form of compensatory day off, another curious fact...a working Saturday rarely ever amounts to an 8 hour day. You'd be lucky to get 4. The compensation though is of an entire day.
But I digress. So, like the man-eater that has tasted blood, and doesn't like that its not served one day, the group of us trudged in to work that day. After the rudimentary custom of settling down, our man from overseas got cracking...well not immediately, and that is where the nub of the matter lies. Any meeting, like a relationship, needs an ice-breaker. So for a few minutes we heard some really smart comments, funny too, and there was some aisle rolling. Now most of the time, the jokes were good, and you could really have a nice laugh. But nice was not the adjective I could assign to the guffaws that emanated through the conference room. I don't know if it was a sign of nervousness or some one's cruel idea of payback, but the decibel levels were not what one desires on a day when one would normally be curled up under some warm blankets.
But all this is expected. When people from different cultures meet, it is often easy to misunderstand, or not understand, every spoken word. Humor is relative to circumstance, and in this case geographical origin. So if the white man can laugh about the presence of a cow on the same street that his car is ambling along, the brown man will smile knowingly. And if a brown man can still use the word Negro without malice, the white man would go pink at even the mention of the N word. So humour is a sensitive issue, and usually it helps for the joke administerer(if that's a word and I suspect it's not) to laugh when the punch-line is delivered. Dead panning it is definitely not the way to get some laughs. Embarrassment is the prevalent emotion felt by the man with the face that does not betray any other.
Well, our man was no dead-panner, so his little nuggets of wit were accompanied by the sly wink, and the broad smile. It also helped that some of the jokes were actually easy to understand. The trouble was that some elements in the audience didn't know when to let go. When faced with a little side joke, some of us felt the need to add on our own rejoinders. Sometimes they worked, and were received well by the chief narrator, leading to more merriment. But sometimes, they were just received with a brief blank stare, and then the absent nod. All the while, the broad smile stayed in place. Usually, the boss found this as a good time to change topic, gear or position, as the situation would allow. One such interlude though remains etched in my memory...and I laughed heartily...to myself of course, it would never have done to actually do the rolling-aisle-holding-gut thing. That would have had long-term implications to the career, one would think.
So how did this gem come to be? Well it was nearly half-way through the meeting when the esteemed visitor started narrating his experience with a rather noisy co-passenger. After a bit of rolling of the eyes, and the exaggerated arm movements, you kinda got the gist of his discomfort. Up until that point, everyone was enjoying the joke, one which no doubt everyone in the room identified with. There was no punch line, but as part of the enactment of his reaction, our visitor said, "And man, i was like, just about ready to explode. I had half a mind to set one of the dinner trays across his face"...."Ha ha", "Ha ha", "Ha ha", "Ha ha", "Ha ha", "Ha ha", "Ha ha", "It will rattle, ha ha"....
Erm, what was that? My back was turned to the guy who wanted to be an anomaly at this time, so he couldn't really see my face furiously trying to work out what was being said, and how I should react. As for the main speaker, the smile never changed, but the luminosity reduced rapidly to a level that it soon took on grimace-like proportions. It was clear that one part of his face, like all of mine, was trying to really enjoy the rejoinder.
Now if this was followed by an awkward silence, that usually accompanies a badly delivered joke, or in this case, a non-joke, it would have been quickly brushed away. Amazingly though, this was accompanied by a second stream of laughter. my face now betrayed a sense of incredulity - Really??? you found that funny?? Did I not get it?? Apparently not, cos the laughing continued for some time. Till we went on to the next topic on the agenda.
For the next 10 to 15 minutes, I turned those 3 words in my head. It - Will - Rattle...and then I thought about the guffaws...and the mind boggled.
I don't want to rationalise the group's behaviour. Everyone reacts to an event in a way unique to the composition of the person's mind makeup. So everyone else tittered at what seemed like a very poor joke. So what? Hadn't I said something as non-funny as this in the past? And had I not kicked myself the next second fro having said it? Then why was this situation so irksome? No rationale for that either. But yeah it bugged me to no end that someone could first give voice to this rare nugget, then grinned broadly enough to indicate to all that something monumentally clever had been said, and needed recognition. Which promptly came in the form of raucous head-tossing giggling from the audience.
So that must make me a snob, then, eh? Maybe, but I'm not sure I prefer being the one that joined in...laughter is infectious, and inane laughter even more so, but may I please be allowed to draw a line at this level? I promise to give my best guffaw to everything that is marginally above this particular strata of unfunniness.
Thus endeth my rant..
