Strange Beast ~ Humor pt 2

     Our second story on the journey of exploring humor, deals with the strange beast.

     Come back with me in time to a period when I was ten years old. It was early on a Saturday morning. The weather was beautiful. My Dad decided that it was a good time to clean the basement.

     As we started down the stairs, my Dad, pointed to an object on the floor and said in an angry tone,[i] “See those batteries on the floor, get them off the floor.” I though my Dad was worried that good batteries were being wasted. My response to my Dad was “Don’t worry Dad, those batteries were dead.”  My father got madder and started yelling I don’t care if the batteries are alive or dead get them off the floor.[ii]”… The thought of the batteries on the floor, being alive, being dead and my father’s anger were hilarious to me, so I started laughing. The louder my Dad yelled, the more I laughed, at least initially.

     Did you ever have a miscommunication with another person? A parent? A person in authority? A significant other?

     Did you or the person that you are talking to, ever fail to see the humor in the experience that was unfolding before you?

     Needless to say, the humor was not transformative. It did nothing for my relationship with my Dad that morning. It made cleaning up the basement more of a labored chore.

    What was involved in the miscommunication?

    What contributed to the non-allowing of fun, of belly laughing?  More on the belly laugh in the next post.

    What blocked the potential for humor?

    Did my Dad see a challenge to his authority?

    Did my Dad see me just as a lazy kid?

    Ego and masks entered the picture.

    The Ego and the Ego Ideal, according to Freud, accommodate our actions to our peer group. The Ego specializes in controlling our desire to be happy, our pleasure principle. It works to satisfy the Ego Ideal while providing some politically correct enjoyment. The Ego Ideal is the guardian of our politically correct image. The role of the Ego Ideal is the image we wish to portray to our peer group. We usually want to look good to our peers. Looking good to our peers in part is motivated by wanting our peers to validate us. The difficulty is that our peers cannot validate us. Only we can validate ourselves. So perhaps, my Dad wanted to look good to validate his image of what a father should be. His image of what a father should teach his child.

     The ego ideal becomes a mask. The function of the mask is to protect our vulnerability, to hide our softer side, to project how we want to be viewed.

So in the second story, we find much to block humor. First there is the ego need to control. The need to be serious. Perhaps the need to be angry that the mess was created in the first place. The mess having been created, my Dad now had to supervise my cleaning up the basement on his day off.

So it seems that need, control issues, and masks structured the experience of one person so that my Dad could not laugh at my crazy remark.

 

     Perhaps if I were in my Dad’s position, I might have said something different.

“Oh, the batteries are dead are they? Well let’s say a pray for them … now bury them  but get them off the … floor.” Perhaps a little bit of a bite but nonetheless an attempt at humor that still focuses on the task at hand.

     If we can laugh, from the depths of our being, even a hard task becomes lighter.

      In the next post on Monday, August 17^th, I will talk about the elements that are essential ingredients for humor to emerge. I will talk about the healing vibrations of humor. I will also talk about items that will interfere with the potential for humor to emerge.

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[i] My dad was a good man, who tried his best to handle his life. His anger, tone and volume of voice was quite frightening from the position of myself as a child.

[ii] This was not a literal transcription of his words. They were a little more flavorful than indicated above.