By Jack Krampitz
I have been asked lately by the many fans of my humor columns if I was considering submitting another column soon. So I decided to have a meeting with those very fans to brainstorm possible topics. When we all were able to squeeze into the Volkswagen Beetle, the discussion began.
I started with some of the more obvious suggestions. Politics? “No,” they said, “you are hated enough as it is; don’t make it worse.”
How about sports, local high school athletics, for example? “Sure,” they said, “make fun of high school athletes. That’s a real winner and will make you popular with the players and their parents. Maybe, as a life-long very short person, you can try to humiliate a popular all-state basketball player who might be 7’2” tall with well-crafted jokes about clouds, nose bleeds, and sneaker sizes–really original stuff.” I took that as a no.
Then the conversation roamed everywhere, as we desperately searched for a topic that could be funny in today’s world.
Pro sports–maybe Major League Baseball? There is something hilarious about millionaires and billionaires fighting for even more when I have to take out a home equity loan to take my family to a game. As I take a bite out of my $7 hot dog and take a sip out of my $11 Bud Light, I can barely choke out a muffled chuckle.
Ok, let’s try weather. Sure, weather is hilarious. There is nothing like a major storm to brighten up a room, especially if widespread destruction and injury is involved.
All right, how about medical issues like Covid, masking, vaccines, etc.–you can’t go wrong there.
Masking is a sure winner–if you don’t mind 25 people with picket signs dripping in blood marching in front of your house, screaming “Unmask our bank robbers, unmask our surgeons, unmask our Trick-or-Treaters.” Since the “un-mask our kids” crowd just declared a major victory in our schools, they obviously have become drunk with power. Just today the same group of 20 protesters were arrested at the movie complex in Plainville. Evidently, they totally shut down a viewing of one the films, marching in front of the screen chanting “Un-mask Spiderman!” That’s not funny if you just plunked down $12 for your ticket.
Let’s try vaccines. I can joke about how my life would have been so much better if I hadn’t been forced to take that Polio or Smallpox vaccine. I should be free to die whenever I want. And come to think of it, why is suicide against the law? They don’t even enforce that law. Show me one person in prison who committed suicide. That’s hilarious!
Education is ripe for humor. Maybe I can make some comments about Critical Race Theory. No controversy there. I think we all can agree that slavery was just a slight inconvenience to people of color, or Negros, as some prefer. And now it is actually the Caucasians who are being oppressed. I could write volumes on that topic. The vote was no–I have no idea why.
Possibly Economics could be funny–jokes about Stagflation were popular in the 1970’s. Gas prices could bring a big guffaw from people who just paid $127.36 to get their gas gauge up to 3/4 full. A complete series of jokes about the law of Supply and Demand would bring the house down. Again–a big NO!
Socialism, the bane of Western civilization, could be a killer for humorous discussion. A joke about removing Social Security, or Medicare, or public schools, or the Post Office, or city water and sewers, or National Parks, or disability insurance, or the minimum wage, or the FDIC, or public libraries, or the interstate highway system would really be funny. A joke on those topics could point out that “Survival of the Fittest” is a superior idea–let everyone fend for him or herself. Again, it was thought the topic would be better left untouched.
So how about less controversial education topics–the Pythagorean Theory, Subject-Verb agreement, or the Periodic Table? Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
After well over an hour of often heated discussion, the consensus was that I had nothing funny to talk about. So, I sadly regret to tell you, there will be no Humor column this week.
I can tell you this, though. It is the last time I will ask my wife and two sons for any advice.