My daughter loves the TV show America’s Got Talent. Thankfully she has much more wholesome and uplifting tastes in TV shows than her parents who stayed up past their bedtime to finish The Sinner last night and recently binge-watched the entire second season of Ozark in two days. Occasionally, I would sit down with my daughter and watch AGT when there wasn’t anything dark and disturbing to watch instead. This season I was utterly rooting for the comedian Vicki Barbolak to win. I think that she is hilarious. Vicki is warm, self-deprecating and has great natural timing. She didn’t win, but she got far enough to guarantee a bright future in all sorts of comedic opportunities, in my opinion. When I looked up Vicki on the internet, it turns out that she took her first comedy class when she was 38 years old. What an inspiration for us Second Halfers!!
During AGT, one of the judges, Mel B who is a former Spice Girl band member, dressed as a unicorn and read from a joke book. That brought me back to the days when my kids still had book fairs at school. I gave my kids money for their book fairs with the insistence that they only buy books with that money. They had better not come home with stuffed animals, 4-foot pencils or whoopie cushions . . . only books. Invariably, at least one of them would come home with a joke book. (Retrospectively, I should have put joke books on the “DO NOT spend my money on this at the book fair” list.) Now, I don’t know if the teachers still do this, or if kids can just read to Alexa or Siri now, but back then, their teachers required their students to read to a parent for at least 30 minutes every night. So usually one of my kids would start reading their joke book to me. That is when I would don my noise cancelling earplugs. Okay, not really, but after 18 knock-knock jokes in a row, when I was ready to knock-knock my head into the wall, I would decide that this particular child was an excellent reader and really didn’t need anymore practice reading. Looking back, I am wondering if the whole “read the joke book to Mom” was a well-thought-out scam to get out of reading. My kids are clever like that.
Jokes are a funny thing. (no pun intended, seriously, I just reread that line and I had to laugh that I even wrote it.) We have a love/hate relationship to jokes. And humor is a very personal thing. What I think is hysterical could easily fall flat to you. Spontaneous humor is great, but it often never fails that in social circles, a joke telling session starts up and my palms start getting sweaty. Everyone should have a few good jokes in their pockets for times like these. I have a couple jokes that I have worn out so much that anyone who has ever met me, stood behind me in line or glanced at me funny, probably has heard me tell it. I don’t like long jokes, because I always get so nervous telling them that my mind freezes and the punch line disappears into the thin air. My friend once taught me a really short, corny easy joke that is so short that it’s impossible to forget the punchline and even though it’s a groaner, you get your joke-telling turn over fast. I’m going to share it with you, because I love you guys and I want to give you something. It goes like this: “Two men walk into a bar. Don’t worry, they have bumps on their heads, but they’re okay.”
Thank you, guys! You’ve been great! Give it up for Adulting – Second Half!! Woo-hoo!!! See you tomorrow for what you’ve been waiting for all week, Favorite Things Friday!!!