By G. P. Avants

You gotta love someone with a great sense of humor. They are the sort of person who can find the punch line in any situation or can create one with ease. Maybe a person who can be the butt of a joke and take it with stride might be the rarest humorist of all? I have heard it say that someone with a quick sense of comedic timing really is a sigh of intelligence. 

Being born into a family of humorists, laughers, and practical joke players is ripe with stories galore. When I had my daughter, she developed her own unique sense of humor. We often had laughs about the goofiest thing and it didn’t take much to make us both crack up. She also had a contagious laugh that even as a baby seemed to be larger than life. Early on we found out that my daughter fell into that category of a gifted category. She was a neek and she owned it. One of the areas she blossomed was her ability to connect with people through her humor. My daughter was blessed with beauty, brains, and how to share joy with others. One of the best things I have heard people say about her is that she really makes them feel good. She has a way of disarming others and helping them to feel like they have a real friend who cares for them. 

In my novel, Chronolocity: A Fistful of Chronotons, Levy uses humor to connect with his fellow “inmates” who are quarantines with him. In this scene he jokes with a nine-year-old Martin Luther King Junior after a long day of working on a plan for their escape. 

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There is one interesting automation in the rooms that proved a curiosity to Levy. The lights in each room click on by clapping.

“Can we get some light in here?”  

“Go ahead, I’ve got to use the bathroom.” Junior drops his feet to the floor then shuffles out the door.

 Levy claps his hands together twice and the room is dimly illuminated. He claps one more time and raises the lux level in the room. “I never get tired of that trick.” He looks around the room, opening each of the low rounded shelves. After looking through two or three he finds what he is looking for. “Whoodeedoo.” Levy pulls out the small instrument with a hammer attached by a string. 

            “Good, that didn’t take long,” Junior says with a yawn. He re-enters the room and slips back into bed. 

Levy plays a few notes and the lights respond to the tones. The lights dim. “Okay, that’s cool, and good to know.” He taps the xylophone a few more times and raises the light level. “This whole place is designed to respond to sound or music.”

Junior holds up a finger. “Please don’t tell Tom that. He would test that idea out with a concert of flatulence.”

“A fart fest?” They both laugh. Levy wiggles his nostrils. “Sounds like him.” Levy strikes the xylophone three times, raising the light level quickly. “Let there be light, God said, and there you go!” 

“I think that Moses thing has gone to your head,” Junior points out. 

“No, that wasn’t my Moses line. That one goes, ‘God told Moses to come forth, and he came fifth.’”

“Gotta love that old King James version, eh?”

Levy grins in agreement, “Well Junior, I think I finally figured out how to open the door.”

“Right on!” in his excitement Junior claps his hands together. The lights go out. “Sorry.”  

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Helping people discover their sense of humor, even dry and sarcastic as it may appear is part of education. We do live in a time when society is becoming a little less connected due to so many factors. Finding ways to help people drop their guard, have real communication, and share who they really are, is vital. Can breaking the ice with a little humor also cut some of the various tensions people can face in a social setting? 

Do you have a great sense of humor or live with a real joker? Tell us what a little silliness can do to help make your life a little better? 

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