Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Autism Awareness #10 - Knock Knock. Who's there?

Humor has always been a big part of my life.  I'm not a traditional joke teller like my friend Joe Hanus.  I'm more of a situational humor/story telling kind of a guy.  I love to laugh because it feels good and I love to find the funny in any situation. I might over do it occasionally.  I made a New Years resolution a few years back to tell jokes other people think are funny.  I made it to about Feb 3rd.  It's not that easy.

At any rate, humor is so engrained in cultural issues and social nuance.  If you don't know a social rule or understand a social stigma, you may not get the joke that bends/breaks that rule.  I learned that very directly when living in Poland for 2 1/2 years with the Peace Corps back in the early 90's.  Note - I am really supressing the desire to make a "polish joke" quip here...  I knew that as soon as I understood a joke told by a native speaker, I was really getting somewhere. 

My son loves Mr. Bean (so do I for that matter.  He's pretty funny).  Why does he love him so much?  Consider that Mr. Beam doesn't talk much and his humor is very physical.  He also likes Lucille Ball and the Three Stooges because of the plentiful physical expressions.  He's not exclusively into just that kind of humor but it's a strong draw for him.  Can't blame him really.

Over the last few months he went through a stint of creating his own comics.  That has been fun to see.  The last comic I recall went like this.  First frame - 2 guys standing around.  Second frame - first guy says hi to the other guy.  Final frame - a comet comes out of the sky and squishes one of them (with sound effects).  The way I figure it, at least the one guy said hi to other.  That's a start.  =)  So there you go.

He's even told a few original jokes lately which has been fun to witness.  I must admit, though, I didn't get 'em. I guess that's because we speak different languages.

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