Ha! That's a Good One!

 by Charlotte Bennardo

Photo by Gabriela Frank, Pexels.

Humor is always in included in my writing. A relative once told me that I should do a stand-up comedy gig. Now I don't think I'm funny enough to do even one comedic night, but I have my moments. Funny enough (get that?), the more stressed I am, the funnier I get. I could have won an award for humor when I was undergoing a breast biopsy while pregnant with my second son. I had the whole operating room in stitches. After a clean report (no cancer, just a cyst and tumor together, yay I was a notation in a medical journal! Fame!), all my jokes dried up. 

Humor isn't just for laughing, for having a good time. It can be used to diffuse tense situations, to help us through a difficult situation. There are those lines in movies, like in Armageddon, where Bruce Willis, who's elected to stay behind and detonate the nuclear bomb to destroy the asteroid before it destroys Earth & humanity, says: "Well, this wasn't such a great idea" (or to that effect). We laugh nervously because the line is funny, but it hurts because we know he's going to die. Humor helps reduce tension so that we can deal with something painful or hard.

It's the same with humor when someone is being hurt by another person's words or actions. The only example I can think of at the moment is when one person insults another, and the other one laughs at them and says something snarky like a comment on what the insulter is wearing or how they look and everyone laughs AT the person who started the insults. We've all seen that happen.

Humor can be misguided though; humor at others' expense because of ethnic, financial, religious, educational, or other status can be hurtful. I think of comedians when they "roast" a colleague. The one I saw was Tom Brady, and while many thought the comments funny, I was mortified. Jokes at the expense of decency-not insulting one's children-to me are taboo. 

Whatever style it takes, humor is not limited to humans alone; I've seen so many videos of animals doing funny things: goats doing sidekicks mid-air, dogs acting goofy, birds mimicking language with perfect comedic timing, and others. 

So humor is universal. Let's all enjoy a good laugh.

Charlotte writes MG, YA, NA, and adult novels in sci fi, fantasy, contemporary, paranormal, and romance genres. Her latest YA fantasy novel, The Excalibur Vow, just released and her sweet holiday romance, Christmas Bells, Hanukkah Lights, will be released by The Wild Rose Press, hopefully in time for the holidays. She is the author of the award-winning middle grade Evolution Revolution trilogy, Simple Machines, Simple Plans, and Simple Lessons. She co-authored the YA novels Blonde OPS, Sirenz, and Sirenz Back in Fashion. She is working on several children's and adult novels, and other short stories. She lives in NJ with her family and floofy cat Mink, and a squirrel who insists on digging up her geraniums. I guess he thinks he's funny.