Hi reader,
Welcome to another edition of the TOA newsletter. As usual, there is very little in the way of news, or at least of the urgent form I need to explain RIGHT NOW.
Still, there are a couple of possibilities. I could discuss, I suppose, how I discovered a banana allergy (sensitivity?) after three decades of shoving those yellow poison sticks down my gullet. There is also the story about mice ending a two year exile from my apartment, their triumphant return coming just days after an exterminator was brought in to solve this centuries-old problem for good. And if I really wanted to capture your excitement, dear reader, I have a story about the fifteen seconds in January when I was a suspect in a major murder case.
But I can’t share these stories today. There’s nothing wrong with any of these tales, it’s just that if I told them today, you wouldn’t believe them. No, dear reader, on this day I cannot talk about the morning commute when I saw a hawk swoop across my path and drag a Public Garden squirrel to its doom. I guess that’s the curse of April Fool’s Day – I’m simply not allowed to do anything interesting or unusual today, at least if I plan on having someone else believe my stories. I suppose it’s convenient that it falls on a Monday this year - as Courtney Barnett sang, it's a Monday, so mundane, what exciting thing could happen today?
Of course, I know I make no extra effort to ensure anyone believes my stories. I suppose this is an unfortunate consequence of how I cultivate certain personality traits. At their best, I like to describe these qualities as forms of playfulness. Playfulness sounds good on paper - who doesn't like the idea of fun, or at least being light-hearted? However, this approach does lead to quite a bit of messing around and although such activity doesn't necessarily force me to become a liar, it does occasionally require the intentional misinterpretation of reality. I'll put it this way - when I asked someone last week if the German Audubon had a speed limit, I knew perfectly well that making the joke required I act like I'd misheard what was just said to me.
I do recognize though that some people prefer to remain focused, serious, or grave rather than share my amused outlook on the world. I also know that not everyone can appreciate wit without feeling threatened or mocked. And then there is that sorry subset of the population who heard once that adults are people who've forgotten how to be children - and then made the mistake of believing it. Playfulness, I’ve learned, can sometimes be a very difficult quality to share in such a world.
I think the most difficult environment to cultivate playfulness is in the workplace. One very basic way to define an employee is someone who is paid to take the company seriously. Unfortunately, most workplaces are full of employees. This little fact ends up severely limiting the potential for humor in a workplace because in most cases humor implies something about the current situation isn't being taken very seriously. I learned early on in my career that workplace humor had therefore evolved to simply mean anything that referred to the common assumptions held in the workplace. This way, everyone could enjoy a nice laugh without putting themselves at risk for appearing to lack the required seriousness - for what do we take more seriously than our shared assumptions?
I understood this perfectly just last week. It was early in the day and someone asked - where's Betsy? It was 9:15, but Betsy is never late, so this question was met with grave concern from everyone. We all assumed the worst. Or, I should say, from everyone except Jack. Jack wasn't there because Jack is always late. In fact, a couple seconds later someone else asked - where's Jack? - and the tension broke as a wave of chuckles and snickers emerged from the group. The question wasn't funny, not at all, and given the way it distracted the group from the vital matter of The Where's Betsy Situation I might even suggest it was a stupid question. But since it did serve as workplace shorthand for referring to Jack's inability to get into work a minute before 9:45, an exasperating quality we'd all mocked before, it also qualified as high comedy, and in life high comedy is always preferred to worrying about other people. At work, someone who knows everyone's assumptions is basically a stand-up comedian. Jack did indeed arrive a few minutes before ten, as usual, almost a full half-hour after tardy Betsy and entirely unaware of his role as the butt of all early morning jokes.
This reliance on assumptions is the obstacle I face anytime I try to bring my sense of humor into work. In a larger sense, it's the obstacle anywhere I try to express my personality, but at work the issue is particularly concerning. The major assumption that caused me the most problems was this silly idea everyone else seemed to have that all things said at work are true. The idea alone makes me laugh now - truth as a bedrock of at-will employment! Regardless, the issue here goes back to my idea of playfulness, and how this is essentially an SAT word for 'just kidding'. In an environment where everyone assumes everything you say is true, you can't get away with saying anything that falls into the 'just kidding' category.
So, what's a good amateur comedian to do? Reader, I did the only logical thing - I started lying. Or, I should say, I simply continued lying until everyone realized I was lying. This is a difficult trick but I highly encourage you learn it, reader. You start by introducing a basic topic everyone understands and then you slowly unwind it until you can expand it into a Larger Idea. As the idea forms, you accelerate it by telling a story or two loosely related to the topic at hand before going on a semi-related tangent. Along the way, it's vital to interject various Life Lessons and Big Realizations to keep the fringe audience interested. Details always matter - you don't just talk about people in the abstract, you use names, and describe their behaviors or routines in detail.
The best way to include details is to insert little sub-fibs within the larger lie, fibs that refer to the larger assumption of the lie, these references reinforcing a shared assumption of truth, all the while interweaving throughout the story little hints and inconsistencies until it slowly, slowly... dawns on the audience... that all along, you haven't said anything true at all... because who can you trust, on April Fool's Day?
My advice for today - don't be fooled.
Thanks for reading.
