Striking My Funny Bone

The things that elicit tears are not, for the most part, mysteries--loss, pain, ragweed.  But the sources behind laughter?  Their iterations are as varied as M&M flavors.  So, how do I explain all those giggles and guffaws from Friday night's co-worker Christmas gathering?

It wasn't one thing, that's for sure.

Turns out, humor, like a three-course meal, is a multi-layered thing, even if the results seem simple and pure.  And, like food, our personal tastes influence our reactions to it.

For instance, while I'm a nut for word play, physical humor and a well-told story, if there were a humor food truck called F Bombas, I'd likely drive on by.  Despite my ruddy, sturdy look, I'm a delicate creature when it comes to stimulating my funny bone.  A proliferation of swearing, like too much almond extract, is a turnoff for me.  Plus, it seems like cheap writing.  Although there has been one exception in that department--Hugh Grant's f-bomb rat-a-tat in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" cracks me up every time!

When I review the recipe for Friday night's fun, some common ingredients emerge--likable people, comfortable surroundings, good food, bad puns.  Interestingly, only one of those ingredients has its roots in humor.  Giggles, it seems, come more easily when mixed with some sort of behind-the-scenes bubble-inducing elixir--a baking soda for the soul, if you will.  Trust comes to mind as just such an ingredient.

A truly funny evening starts with a teaspoon of trust, ensuring that everyone--even the introverts (especially the introverts)--can have the stage at some point.   With trust in place, humor can flex its many muscles.

I've got a great friend--deeply respected in her profession and the larger community--whose dance moves leave me breathless and drunk with joy.  Another can rattle off a seemingly endless string of rotten puns--regardless of topic--leaving the rest of us vacillating between thoughts of violence and hopeless, joyful surrender.  And a well-timed sideward glance or eye roll?  Priceless!

Yes, there are limits (see F-Bombas).  And, while we are free to delve our own depths of weakness for material, we should be wary of such spelunking of others' lives.  Unless those folks are famous (see New York Times v. Sullivan, 1964).  Regardless of the target, though, mean humor runs its course quickly and leaves a person feeling kind of dirty and depleted.

The best humor lightens and connects us, like a perfect meal enjoyed in good company. 

Words into Being

Masting (noun)--The synchronous production of many seeds. 

So I wasn't dreaming!

Those swamp oaks at Woods Park really were cranking out the acorns this fall.  And now I have the word that has nudged my observations into being--masting.

Isn't that the way with words?  That things or processes take on life and meaning when there is a name for them?

I think of how excited I was recently when my friend Steve shared the article about masting.  Suddenly, my casual observations had hard science and an easy-to-remember word to back them up.  And I like that word, masting.  It evokes a sailboat to me, with its sturdy center pole transforming cloth and wind into engine.  An untethered sail, after all, might as well be a bed sheet.

Because I have a tendency to anthropomorphize everything, I readily assign trees brains and personalities, as well as the ability to communicate and feel (although, again, the science kind of backs me up here).  But, carrying over the sailboat theme, I can see trees as masts themselves--not only their sturdy trunks as mast (an easy comparison) but, now,  this periodic, almost gaudy overproduction of acorns--the masting--becomes  a kind of sail that propels these trees into the future.  And this act of masting clearly is about the future.

And the fact that masting is synchronous--that all of the oaks in an area overproduce during the same year?  Well, I can practically hear them chattering to each other!  German forester and biologist Peter Wohlleben calls that chatter--carried out by the fungal networks that move between trees' roots--the wood-wide web.  Ain't that a kick in the shorts?!   Granted, weather--specifically spring-time weather--also clearly is helping these trees to organize themselves.  And organize they must, since acorns don't just appear overnight.

Masting . . . it is a small word that ignited my imagination and made something real, even though it had already existed outside of my knowing it.  That gets me thinking about the incredible value of words, and what happens to us--or to nature or to anything else--when we possess or lack the words to name them.

Do things--or people--only exist when we know what to call them?  Certainly, it is easy to discount those things (or people) we do not know by name.    Conversely, there is deep joy in having mysteries unveiled in the naming of things.

I think back to Santiago, the first openly  transgendered student I'd met.  His was a journey I could not imagine, but when that name--transgendered-- finally appeared in our lexicon, it was no stretch of the imagination to predict the deep relief that must have washed over him, this name whispering him into being.  How many folks before him, spanning generations, had no name for themselves?

Name-calling is serious business.  Like masts and masting, this naming of things is all about how we move into the future.  We should take care to do it well.