Fragments From Floyd

Honestly, I confess that I have wanted to be somehow like him, I will confess. I had never thought about why, exactly. But watching the easy exchange between Pierce and McIntrye, I realize this is part of it: I envy the close and easy bonds between Benjamin Franklin Pierce and his partner in crime--first Trapper John, and then BJ. He was never alone against the "enemies" in camp. He always had a friend.

His sidekick understood his point of view and took his side in every battle with the "enemy" in camp. How few people can stand united with any one other person against all obstacles and laugh? And more than that, his partner always shares Hawkeye's sense of timing, his ironic twists. There is always at least one other person who 'gets the joke' and cooperates oftentimes in setting it up. Next to sex, the bond of shared laughter has got to be one of the most intimate of human experiences.

If I had life to do over again, there would be more music and there would be more laughter in my life. The music I could make alone. The laughter-- that is a more elusive fish. One can laugh alone, but the most satisfying humor is shared, and just as one finds only one or a few with whom he or she could spend a lifetime, it seems that finding another who shares the same way of coping with humor, of crisis management with laughter, of word play and wit-- is just as rare.

Two people who laugh at the same thing are more likely, perhaps, to stay married than two who balance their checking account the same way. Humor involves the intellect (wit), the emotions (mirth) and the physiology (laughter) and so when two people laugh at the same thing, there is a deep connection that is beyond words and a bonding occurs, or the bond that was always there is uncovered.

I am decidedly not funny as in joke-telling. If pressed, I couldn't come up with a half dozen jokes (half of them knock-knock) and I'd flub them sure as the world. But I do see (and too often voice) the ridiculous with some clarity in the news and my own bumbling life, and absurdity abounds on every hand. I see myself as a mirthful person; my family may not agree because I've learned to keep many of my witty quips to myself over the years. Language is packed with humor, and puns are not off limits, no sir. While I am definitely not into cruel humor at another's expense (which seems so popular on TV comedy these days) sarcasm and irony are fair and oft-used tactics, but I have to be very careful where I use them and have been misunderstood by my more concrete and somber colleagues in the past. There's nothing more lonely than to be the only one to get the joke.

The most laughter-filled time in my life was, paradoxically, while working in a Chronic Pain Program as a physical therapist. I would come home on Mondays, after our medical rounds, with permanent laugh lines etched in the corners of my mouth. While I'll confess, some of our pitiful patients were easy targets, the more usual victims were the clinical psychologist, the nurse, the sociologist-director (who gave presentations on humor in medicine), the exercise physiologist, the PT or the DO medical director. We were all such exaggerated characters in our own right, working in a stressful situation where terrible things had happened to the people in our charge-- not unlike Hawkeye and Hotlips and Radar in the heat of battle and bloody operating rooms. Lordy, it felt good to laugh.

If you and I spent time together, would we share a sense of humor? For some whom I've come to know via Fragments, I think "most definitely over a pitcher of some bubbly beverage, he and I or she and I would quickly find common ground and each other's humor-frequency… they are the BJ's and Trappers of this little blogging world". And there are others for whom I think "we'd get along intellectually, but he or she is too (serious, concrete, up-tight, academic…) for me to be wide-open with my authentic quirky way of seeing and expressing things… these are the Frank Burns and Hotlips of the blogosphere; we'd smile, but we wouldn't laugh often."

Sorry. I've gone and gotten ruminative about humor. I'm a mess. But then I've been alone with the dog for two days since Ann's snowed in at work. I'm starting to get a little cabin crazy and everything seems absurdly tragic or funny to me. Better laugh than cry. Eh?