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People have figured it out. I’m not really all that funny. In person, that is.
Case in point: I just got back from vacation and people did not say, "Hey Bruce, tell us about your vacation. I’m sure it will be hilarious." Instead they said, "I can’t wait to read about your vacation, because we’re sure if you try and tell about us about it we will fall asleep due to your dull and dry verbal delivery." I don’t deny it. Sometimes it’s even hard to tell that I’m telling a joke. "Why did Bruce just say that there’s an elephant in the refrigerator?" someone will ask. "Maybe it was a joke," someone else will respond. "But he’s not even smiling. Maybe he really thinks there’s an elephant in the refrigerator." "Could be. Personally, I think he’s just a fruitcake." So that why I write humor, so people can add their own tonal inflections to my monotone words. In actuality, it’s my readers that are funny, not me. You guys are great! You crack yourselves up. That might be going overboard, but my point is that if you’ve never met me, and you expect that in person I will be as clever as I am on paper (however clever you think that is), then you’re in for a disappointment. Humor columns are like personal ads. On paper I’m muscular, have sparkling blue eyes, and am six foot tall. In person I have muscles I haven’t used for a long time, my eyes are hidden by my droopy eyelids, and I’m standing on a stool. (My wife, Sharron, insists that I add a disclaimer saying that I am still kind of cute because she hates it when I use self-depreciating humor. Frankly, I don’t think I’m good enough for self-depreciating humor.) I may not be a comedy laugh riot in person, but if you set me in front of a word processor for a couple hours I will come up with a joke. After several more hours, I will write another one. Over a decade, with multiple rewrites, I can pretend to be glib and quick-witted. Sharron will see me sitting at the computer scowling at the screen and she will ask, “What are you doing? Are you mad about something?” "I’m writing humor, damnit!" I’ll answer. "Well, you better not be making fun of yourself!" I’ll mumble something like, "Dang it, she caught me again," and I’ll have to delete everything I wrote. So, you never read this, okay? I’m always funny, all the time. My wife said so. See, I think Sharron is still a bit confused by our first couple of dates. Normally, I’m pretty quiet, but when I met her I said to myself, "I am going to have to be outgoing and funny if I want to get to know this amazing person I just met," and so, for a while, I was. Now and then she’ll say to me, "You know, you’ve been kind of quiet since 1997." I’ll make up some excuse like, "Yeah, I’ve had a headache." Sooner or later she’s going to catch on and then she’ll be like the rest of you. "Bruce," she’ll say, "Instead of going to dinner with me, can you just write about what it would be like to go to dinner with me?" "Sure honey," I’ll say, because then I’ll know she loves me for who I really am -- a billionaire athlete who travels the world in his own private yacht. |
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