Laugh At This, At Least

You know what has always really freaked me out and made me profoundly uncomfortable? Humourless people. People who absolutely never laugh, who appear not to LIKE to laugh. There's something about that that's way spookier than, oh, I don't know, say, poltergeists. It's wrong. That's what it is. It's just plain wrong.

I encounter humourless students fairly often. They're a small minority, but you see them all the time. The class will be roaring over something hilarious somebody said and you look over and there's one or two kids that can be counted on to sit grim-faced no matter what. And you just want to smack them. Until they laugh.

I'm not talking about dumb people who don't GET jokes. That's excusable, I guess, though sad. I mean folks who have intellect but appear not to enjoy jokes. Who find laughing a chore. That's outright scary to me.

I don't know what I'd do if I were the parent of a humourless child. Two words come to mind, however. Ice floe.

I feel guilty sometimes for disdaining humourless people. It's a possibility that they were traumatized in childhood or something and all the mirth went out of them. But I don't know. Sometimes you just get the impression that they almost look down on humour. Like you must when something is beneath you.

You just want to scream, "LIGHTEN UP!" and light them on funny fire.

I don't think we should sit idly by and let the humourless be a drag on everybody else's fun. I think we should round 'em up. Stick 'em on planes. Send them to a really unfunny place. Russia comes to mind. Where everybody looks like somebody just dropped an iron curtain on their foot. Where citizens are required by law to be grim-faced. Which would explain why the most popular comedian there is Paulie Shore.

I just realized the irony of this little piece on humourlessness. It's by far my least funny one yet. Dear God. I'm spooking myself.

Am I horrified?

Da.