Humor

Want to laugh? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This might surprise some of you, but I tend to have a reputation as somewhat of a jokester.

No. Seriously.

As someone in therapy, something my therapist and I concluded is that humor is my version of small talk. Humor is how I tend to break the ice with people. When people come to the Post Office, one of my goals is to make them laugh. A lot of this is done by taking them literally.

“Can you check my mail?”

“Yes.”

*Just sit there doing what I was doing*

“Will you check my mail?”

“Yes.”

There are a number of professors and students who come in and leave laughing and I hope in a better mood. A professor I go out and do evangelism with has got used to it and says he knows he has to watch his words with me. There are several moments of outright laughter.

Also, once something enters into the joke vocabulary, expect it to stay there. The humor never dies. Some people have asked if I do the virgin birth thing, which I do affirm, in person. Yes. Most everyone on campus knows about affirming the virgin birth.

For me, this is also much easier to do than small talk because I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like to laugh, though I am sure there are some. Jokes are easy to do and some people have told me I should consider going into Christian comedy as well.

As someone working on a philosophy degree as well, it really makes me think about language a lot more. Why do we say what we say and do we really watch the meaning of our words? A serious problem I have spoken of is how we treat the words think and feel as if they are synonyms.

In the Plato dialogue Parmenides, Parmenides tells a young Socrates to watch the common people and what they say. This is a great way of learning philosophy as you pay attention to words more and what they mean. Not only this, but learning philosophy has a side benefit of helping you know how to be more annoying at times.

The problem is this is a playful annoying and it can be hard to tell when people don’t want to do such anymore. In my mind, if something is funny, it stays funny. Unfortunately, not everyone sees it this way. The way humor can be off-putting for some is the very way that small talk is off-putting for me. If you want me to tune you out quickly, then a good way to do it is to come up to me and engage in this small talk.

Keep this in mind also when dealing with people on the spectrum. We also like to laugh and laughter is a great way to break through defenses and put people more at ease. Just make sure that you don’t make any humor too offensive as many on the spectrum have been used to being treated derisively.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)