Sunday, May 10, 2015

Comedy in a world of not funniness.

There are a lot of reasons I fell in love with and married Chrissi. I'm not going to list them all here. Why? Because this isn't about all of the reasons, it's only about one. And I know me well enough to know that if I start to list the reasons, then I'll start to elaborate on them, and then this whole first paragraph will go off on a tangent, filled with pointless details that aren't relevant to the actual post I am writing today. Kinda like it just did.

So, what is this one true reason I am going to blog about on this day-of-the-mother? Ok, I won't keep you breathless with anticipation any longer.

Well, maybe a little longer.

She's funny. More to the point, she's MY kind of funny. I have the kind of a sense of humor that many people just don't get (or don't want!). Like saying kind-of-a instead of "kind of" in the previous sentence, in an obscure but hilarious nod to the line "what-a kind of a name is Stove?" from the movie Bridesmaids. You see, none of you people who aren't reading this laughed at that, but Chrissi would have.

Over the course of my long career in comedy (aka life), it is not unusual for people to stare at me blankly when I tell a joke or (what I think is) a funny story. But Chrissi? She does more than just "Get it". She elaborates on my insanity. Of course, being the gentleman that I am, I return the favor. Sometimes, with us, it's hard to know which one the insanity starts with on any given topic. Whether it's interchangeable penises, or a friendly game of "Punch Prius", instead of thinking it's strange or stupid when one of us says or does something inane or droll, the other of us that isn't the one of us that originally came up with said drollness just adds on to the run-on sentence. It's almost as if our brains are cosmically linked in some sort of space-time continuum. Or else we just think alike.

A quick example before I return to our Mother's Day festivities (which consists of me watching the kids while Chrissi does schoolwork. Sexy, huh?). A few weeks ago, we were driving back from a far-too-brief trip to Bristol. For some reason that I don't believe we ever actually figured out, traffic was inching along at a pace that a snail would be jealous of, for many miles. As anyone who's been stuck in traffic knows, the most frustrating part is not knowing why. It sometimes seems like a random punishment from God for not being funny. But maybe that's just me. Anyway, Chrissi and I were discussing what might be the cause, and talking about how other drivers were also probably wondering, when she saw a roadside sign that had been partially knocked down, making it difficult to read from far away. The sign was for some cave that was coming up at the next exit. It was obviously not related to the slow-down, but Chrissi said, "Oh, that's what it is. People are wondering what attraction is coming up, and the have to slow down to read it." Then she turns and yells, as if to the driver behind us, "It's a cave!"

That's funny, right? I mean, I don't know how well that translates when you're not in the moment, but it cracked me up, thinking about a line of cars full of people trying to read a knocked down road sign. So then, keeping with this post's topic about she and I building on each other's silliness, I also turned as if speaking to the driver behind us and shouted "Pass it down!"

She laughed when I did that. And that's why I married her.