Telling a Joke in Print
I've collected father figures throughout my life -- a pasttime owed to not knowing my dad as well as I would have liked. Collecting father figures is, I imagine, like collecting anything else: some figures are better than others and the ultimate goal is having a complete set. Unfortunately, I don't get father figures from the Danbury Mint...
...so I'm not really sure when my collection will be complete.
I was reminded on one particular father figure the other day when I was talking to a friend about my blogging. They said something akin to "hey, I never knew you were funny". They didn't use those exact words, but the concepts of "humored" and "surprised" were both encoded in the conversation. You see, it's really hard to be funny in a blog because it's a print medium. Pitch and tone and body language and timing and pickles and eye contact and facial expressions and little old women don't come through in a print medium.
In high school I worked very hard to learn how to tell a joke in print. My senior year, I almost got it. I wrote a story about a group of bank robbers on the run who kidnap the pope and wander around in the Sahara and a friend of mine published it in the school newspaper. It was almost funny: it had the pope. The Sahara. A couple going through a mid-life crisis. It had everything you could possibly want in such a story, except a sense of timing and, perhaps, a discernable plot.
But I kept at it. My senior year of college I wrote a story for a writing class about my AP Composition teacher, my literary father figure through parts of high school. It was a rambling retelling of my coming of age through his tutelage, although at some point he was compared to Barney Rubble (trust me, it all made sense). The paper got an "A" so I sent it to him, along with a cartoon of Fred Flintstone and a caricature of my teacher's face on Barney's body.
A few weeks later I received the story back, marked up by my teacher, just as any of my AP Composition homeworks would have been marked up -- mastery of the semi-colon would elude me for some time. At the end, in lieu of a grade, was a small note which, paraphrased through over a decade of memory, went something like:
I am honored to be the subject of this exposition. I've showed this to my wife, ????, and we both had a very good laugh. You are a good writer and have finally learned the very difficult skill of telling a joke in print. Good luck in all your endeavors.
High praise from a stern teacher, especially a stern teacher that had just been cast as Barney Rubble.
Blogging is slowly awakening in me a desire to compose, and since humor is near and dear to my heart, it will stick its head up on occaision in this blog. Some people have been quite surprised by the humor in my blog. Others have been downright surprised by the lack of humor in my blog. Personally, I've been surprised by the lack of pictures in my blog. I can't stand to read my blog when it doesn't have pictures and have no idea how you have the patience to have gotten this far into this post.
All of my old High School papers are still at my mom's house. I need to stop by there one day and pick them up and reconnect with my literary self who is (quite literally) stuck in the early 90's. One day when I am brave, I will read the 300 page "book" that I wrote the summer after 8th grade.
My pre-pubescent foray into science fiction, I am sure, will make Piers Anthony look like E. B. White.
Of course, back then, I had not yet learned to tell a joke in print.
...so I'm not really sure when my collection will be complete.
I was reminded on one particular father figure the other day when I was talking to a friend about my blogging. They said something akin to "hey, I never knew you were funny". They didn't use those exact words, but the concepts of "humored" and "surprised" were both encoded in the conversation. You see, it's really hard to be funny in a blog because it's a print medium. Pitch and tone and body language and timing and pickles and eye contact and facial expressions and little old women don't come through in a print medium.
In high school I worked very hard to learn how to tell a joke in print. My senior year, I almost got it. I wrote a story about a group of bank robbers on the run who kidnap the pope and wander around in the Sahara and a friend of mine published it in the school newspaper. It was almost funny: it had the pope. The Sahara. A couple going through a mid-life crisis. It had everything you could possibly want in such a story, except a sense of timing and, perhaps, a discernable plot.
But I kept at it. My senior year of college I wrote a story for a writing class about my AP Composition teacher, my literary father figure through parts of high school. It was a rambling retelling of my coming of age through his tutelage, although at some point he was compared to Barney Rubble (trust me, it all made sense). The paper got an "A" so I sent it to him, along with a cartoon of Fred Flintstone and a caricature of my teacher's face on Barney's body.
A few weeks later I received the story back, marked up by my teacher, just as any of my AP Composition homeworks would have been marked up -- mastery of the semi-colon would elude me for some time. At the end, in lieu of a grade, was a small note which, paraphrased through over a decade of memory, went something like:
I am honored to be the subject of this exposition. I've showed this to my wife, ????, and we both had a very good laugh. You are a good writer and have finally learned the very difficult skill of telling a joke in print. Good luck in all your endeavors.
High praise from a stern teacher, especially a stern teacher that had just been cast as Barney Rubble.
Blogging is slowly awakening in me a desire to compose, and since humor is near and dear to my heart, it will stick its head up on occaision in this blog. Some people have been quite surprised by the humor in my blog. Others have been downright surprised by the lack of humor in my blog. Personally, I've been surprised by the lack of pictures in my blog. I can't stand to read my blog when it doesn't have pictures and have no idea how you have the patience to have gotten this far into this post.
All of my old High School papers are still at my mom's house. I need to stop by there one day and pick them up and reconnect with my literary self who is (quite literally) stuck in the early 90's. One day when I am brave, I will read the 300 page "book" that I wrote the summer after 8th grade.
My pre-pubescent foray into science fiction, I am sure, will make Piers Anthony look like E. B. White.
Of course, back then, I had not yet learned to tell a joke in print.
posted by Ed at 1:52 PM
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