Must Have a Sense of Humor…

I think sometimes, people don’t really understand how special a real sense of humor is…

I see this phrase get thrown around a lot. I see it in internet dating ads. “Looking for a sense of humor.” I see it in employment ads. “Must have a sense of humor.” I even see it when I’m looking for new ghostwriting projects. “Need a writer with a sense of humor.”

Do you all realize what a generic requirement that is? Everyone has a sense of humor. There is no person out there that has lived past the age of 3 and not laughed one time. Honestly, senses of humor are like assholes. Everyone has one.

And every one is different.

To me, a ‘good’ sense of humor is the ability to laugh at something, even though it might offend someone or even you personally. Let me tell you a story about one of the finest senses of humor I’ve ever seen.

It’s summer in Sierra Vista, Arizona. Me and my friend Tina are on gate guard duty at the back gate of Fort Huachuca. It’s a boring duty, but we make the time pass by making fun of the tourists that pull up, after mistakenly pulling off the highway too soon on their way to Tucson.

A blue Sedan with Nebraska plates pull up. Inside is a middle aged white couple. They make immediate eye contact with me and avoid Tina entirely.

Let me explain why. I’m white as the day is long, not very big, and extremely non-threatening. I’m soft, squishy and harmless looking. Tina is a midnight black, daughter of Africa, 150 pounds and 5’8” of pure muscle type. When it comes to nervous white people, there’s non threatening black, like Will Smith, and there is threatening black, like Tupac. Tina is Tupac black with extra neck tattoos. Tourists tend to avoid her, especially the white ones.

The Nebraska couple cracks their window a quarter of an inch and screams to me for directions. Here’s the deal, I blow at directions. At this gate, I’m bad cop. I’m in charge of telling tourists to turn around. I’m not the nice one who gives them directions.

Tina is.

She walks up to the car and I literally see the woman in the passenger seat flinch away from her as she leans over the cracked window. She gives them directions and they drive away. She walks back to where I’m standing, shaking her head.

“They good?”

Tina nods. “Yeah, but I can’t wait for the letter the commander is going to get.”

“Letter?”

“Yeah,” Tina looks ready to piss herself laughing. “The one that says what a nice, eloquent, colored girl I am.”

That, my friends, is a sense of humor.

When you advertise for a ‘sense of humor’ you might as well advertise for some who ‘knows how to paint.’ Everyone can work a paint brush, but there is only one Picasso.

When you’re a dude looking for a girl on an internet dating site, who has a sense of humor, what I read is ‘I’m not that funny, but I’m not that attractive either. I need someone to tell me I’m special by laughing at my dumb jokes.”

When you’re an employer who tells me you’re looking for a good sense of humor, what I’m seeing is “my last secretary wouldn’t screw me. So I made a bunch of mean jokes at her expense. Then she sued me. I’m really looking for a bitch that will just take it and not fight back.”

A good sense of humor is a special thing. It’s like having a special palette, where you can taste all the flavors of something, even when some are weird. It’s like having the eye for detail that allows you to create a special dress design, which is both flattering to a woman’s body and aesthetically interesting.

A good sense of humor is rare. Stop advertising for it like you’re looking for typing skills. Generally, those of us with a true ‘good sense of humor’ would rather die than work in a cubicle anyway.

Does that mean never getting offended over anything? Hell no. My friend Tina was probably extremely offended the day those people treated her like she was about to car jack them. But she found a way to laugh about it.

Does that mean being intentionally offensive? Absolutely not. I’ve never found Andrew Dice Clay funny. It’s not because I’m an uptight bitch. It’s because his act wasn’t funny. Nothing he said was actually humorous. He was just being offensive for the point of being offensive. That’s not humor. That’s just being a dick.

As far as I’m concerned, George Carlin was the only human being with a sense of humor sophisticated enough to pull off a rape joke.

When you are a truly funny person, offending people is a side effect of your act. It isn’t the goal. You make your jokes and you hope they land. But you accept the fact that eventually, somewhere, someone will get offended. When they do, you brush it off.

Because you know not everyone has a good sense of humor.

Look, I’m never been one of those ass sniffing artists who talks about my ‘art’. I don’t write angst filled poetry or paint pictures of my anger at my father, or some other such bullshit. I’m never going to be literary. I’m never going to win a Pulitzer. I’m cool with that. But I am a god damn artist. I have a true good sense of humor, and it’s a bit rarer than you all think. If you question how important a good sense of humor is, I strongly recommend you check out “A Modest Proposal.” Never underestimate the power of funny.

A good sense of humor isn’t a given…it’s a god damn gift. Stop advertising for that shit when you don’t really mean it. Generally, you can get any idiot to laugh at anything.  But only the truly gifted can laugh at something that upsets them.

And only the artists can make a good joke about it in the first place.