Around and About with Richard McCarthy: Real holy laughter
I’ve come to believe there can be a profound and potent human connection in laughter. Shared humor and hatefulness toward someone don’t mix very well. The poet Alan Ginsberg used the phrase “real holy laughter” in his epic poem “Howl,” and I can identify with that wording.
Acting upon this understanding, I often try to create a humorous moment, even with people with whom I’m having just a fleeting interaction.
Sometimes this attempt at a moment of shared funniness is with those who have a role in the service industry. I think it is a sign of respect to offer a chuckle or a guffaw or an outright hearty laugh to someone behind a counter, so that you’re not just treating them as a function without a heart and spirit behind it.
If artificial intelligence and robotics keep teaming up the way they are headed, we will have plenty of time in the relatively near future to interact with automatons, with which real holy laughter will be impossible. Right now, we still have each other.
Recently I’ve had three experiences wherein I tried to share a moment of folly with a person behind a counter, resulting in two sweet, if brief, connections and one “sound of one hand clapping” flop.
Before I tell you about the three happenings, I should say that like a lot of folks my age, I’m somewhat nonplussed at being as old as I am. You might even call it being “in denial.” As I’ve written before, I can relate to the T-shirt that says, “It’s weird that I’m the same age as old people.”
Two of my three attempts at a humorous connection involved my setting aside this reluctance to accept my age and instead to lean into my seniorhood for a laugh.
In the first instance, I had stopped at a convenience store to get my car fueled and was paying inside with cash. I wanted to get $30 worth of gas, and had a couple of $20 bills. I gave the clerk, a middle-aged woman, the two twenties, and she swiftly and surely gave me back a $10 bill. Then I paused for dramatic effect, looked her in the eye with obvious facetiousness, and said, “That money changed hands real quick. You sure you’re not trying to flim-flam an old man?”
The two of us shared a laugh. I liked the feeling that I’d punctuated the routine of her workday with a moment for the highlight reel.
The second instance took place in a pharmacy. The woman in line ahead of me was at the register, and she had a child, small enough to have a pacifier in its mouth, in her shopping cart.
The clerk, a young woman, offered the child its choice of stickers with different animal designs on them, and the mother selected one for the child, saying that the animal on it was a favorite of his.
When it came my turn at the register, I stepped up and paid for my one item, a bottle of 50+ (“Silver”) men’s vitamins. I waited until the transaction was complete, looked dead seriously at the clerk, and said, in a voice that matched that look, “There’s some age discrimination going on here.”
Not knowing to what I was referring, the clerk got a look on her face that was a mixture of consternation and mortification. I felt a bit guilty about setting her up so but, as any comedian will tell you, the better she was fooled, the bigger the laugh of relief that would follow.
Then I smiled and said, “You didn’t offer me an animal sticker.”
It took a second or two, but then she broke out in a belly laugh.
Now that she was in on the joke, the young woman threw herself into her part in the skit. She looked at the stickers and said, in an authoritative voice, “Alright, do you want a sticker?” I said “No, I just wanted to be asked.”
As I walked away, we kept eye contact and kept chuckling at our little joke. I knew I’d made another shift highlight reel.
Now we come to my attempt at a shared laugh that bombed, which took place at a coffee shop. When she was ringing up my purchase, the barista, another young woman, said, “Are you a member?”
I answered the way I often do when asked that question: “No, I wouldn’t belong to any club that would have me as a member,” stealing a line from Groucho Marx.
The quip fell flat. She didn’t even look at me, let alone comment about what I’d said. I figured maybe she’d heard the line before and felt like it didn’t merit a response, or maybe she wasn’t up for a laugh. That certainly was her right.
Part of the respect I wrote about earlier is allowing people to decide for themselves whether or not they want to be in my play.
I’ll point out that the above Groucho line doesn’t always get swatted away like a fly. Once, a young man not only got the joke but came back with, “Groucho also said, ‘Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend, but inside of a dog, it’s hard to read.’ ”
So in two of three instances I got the connection I was offering, for a .667 average. If it were a baseball batting average, it would put me in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, unanimously, on the first ballot. I like to think it may someday get me into the Hall of Mirth, located somewhere in the heavens.
Amherst resident Richard McCarthy, a longtime columnist at the Springfield Republican, writes a monthly column for the Gazette.
Daily Hampshire Gazette
