I want it, you want it, we all want the funny. We want to laugh, we want to learn how to make others laugh, and we’ve all seen the people who don’t seem to mind putting themselves in embarrassing and vulnerable positions that lead to others laughing at them as opposed to with them. They don’t mind it, because they just want to be funny.

Most of us don’t want it so bad that we would take a class on it, read a book, or watch an instructional video on it, but we study, mimic, and outright steal the jokes we hear at school, in the workplace, or in the media. We share funny posts under the guise of “If I considered it funny, I thought others might too,” but we all know what you’re doing. You want others to consider you funny.

One of the most rewarding elements of being funny is that it doesn’t happen too often, it’s often so subjective that 50% of the people around you won’t find you funny, and it’s just really hard to be truly funny. Repeating a knock-knock joke or a Bazooka Joe joke might elicit a chuckle, if delivered correctly, but if we want hysterical laughter, we have to be situationally spontaneous, and that ain’t easy.  

Most of us screw jokes up in some way, so often, that it can be embarrassing. Some of us mess the stresses up when it comes to punctuating a punch line in a proper manner. Some of us have horrible joke-telling rhythm. Some of us provide our audience the exact same material as the best comic in the world, but for some reason we don’t hit the mark the way they do. What happened? Why didn’t they fall over laughing the way they did when that comedian told the joke?

The first thing we all need to do is relax for just a second and realize that we’re not as funny as Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno are, and we never will be, and they’re not as funny as they are either. “What? I’ve seen their acts. They’re funny,” you say. You’ve seen their standup routines, and their standup routines are hysterical, but they’re works in progress. They spend hours, months, and sometimes years perfecting their jokes. They test them out on audiences, and they adapt their material to the audience’s laughter. They change words, phrases, tones, and even pauses to perfect their comedic rhythm. In the process to perfection, they fail as often as they succeed. When we watch one of their specials, we see their (‘A’) game material that has been tried and tested to perfection. We see the results of their sometimes painful process. This is their craft, and they do it so well that they make it look easy, but it wasn’t always this way. They have natural gifts, of course, but they honed those gifts over the course of decades, until they found their groove. They also wanted it more than us, as they proved on the day after they bombed on stage. They are funnier than the rest of us, however, and we hear that in interviews, but they’re not as funny as they are on stage. That’s their (‘A’) game material. 

As hard as we try, we can never be as funny as Leno and Seinfeld, but we can steal their material and sell it as our own at the various water coolers. We can mimic their rhythm and patterns when we retell their jokes, and we can (and do) mimic the reactions of our favorite situational comedy stars. One of the primary reasons such theft is so successful is that the standup comedians and sitcom stars do all the hard work of laying the foundation for what’s funny. They’ve tried and tested the rhythmic structures of their tones and exit strategies, and they end up influencing what he all consider funny. When we repeat those patterns, rhythms, and reactions, there’s a level of familiarity to it, and familiar is funny. People are just more comfortable with these patterns and rhythms, so it’s just easier, and less taxing, to copy them. We all do it in one form or another. Some of us wish we didn’t have to resort to that, but we can’t help it. We want the laugh.

***

Erik Schmidt never studied the finer points of funny, but he obviously believed that nothing left a better punctuation mark on a punchline better than a well-executed, perfectly timed exit. Our guess was that he didn’t marvel at the sitcom, stage left exit, and believe he should try it one day. He just sort of absorbed it over the years of watching sitcoms, and he ended up believing that the perfect exit could cover for any deficiencies his jokes may have had.

Erik was a nervous guy. He wasn’t a public speaker, and we never broke the barrier between acquaintance and friendship. He wasn’t at ease telling me a joke, and for some reason it made him nervous, but he loved doing it.

Through the years we worked together, I attained some sort of upper-echelon status in his joke-telling world. If he ever came across what he considered a fantastic joke, he felt compelled to bring it to me for some reason. It might have had something to do with the fact that I enjoy laughing. I’m not afraid to make an absolute fool out of myself laughing at a joke. I’m also not one of those types who tries to top a joke with one of my own. If you’re funny, you’re funny in my world, and I let you have the stage for however long you want it and need it. Most of us just can’t live with that. We hear a joke, and our instinct is “You’re funny, but I’m funnier. Catch this …” and we tell our funnier joke. I try very hard not to do this, which is why I found his comedic exits so confusing. “I’m giving you the stage,” I wanted to say. “Where are you going?”

Before attempting his comedic exits, Erik would lean down, and put his hands on the desk before him. This was, I’m guessing, his joke-telling stance. I can’t remember any of the actual jokes he told me. Most of them weren’t as great as he thought they were, but they weren’t that bad either. The actual jokes don’t matter though. What mattered to me were his exits. He had this whole routine down. He would lean down, tell the joke, and deliver the punch line. In the immediate aftermath of the punch line, he would pull his hands away from the desk in a swift manner and exit in an erratic fashion. This erratic exit was supposed to punctuate the joke. It was supposed to add to the comedic rhythm. “Get in, get out” was his strategy. Don’t stick around for the laughter. If you execute an ideal exit, the laughter will follow as a matter of course. It will arise in appreciation of the exit, as punctuation for the rhythm the audience feels compelled to conclude with you. “Get in, GET OUT!”

It’s a compulsion sitcom fans feel compelled to add to the tail end of their jokes after watching sitcoms for decades. This compulsion is so strong that it feels instinctual. The “don’t try this at home” lesson Erik should have learned the first couple times he tried it was, make sure you have somewhere to go when you exit. There is no “exit stage left” in real life. There is no curtain concealing the actor’s exit in real life. Even trained TV watchers, who know they’re not supposed to watch you exit can’t help it, and some of the times, they see the real life actor trapped in the reality of having nowhere to go.

There have been times when my friend attempted an exit stage left, after executing the perfect punchline tone and pitch, and ended up in another row of desks looking back at me uncomfortably. It’s embarrassing. The sitcoms don’t cover this territory well, for their characters always have a predetermined destination. No one offered my friend this luxury, and anyone watching him could see that he didn’t plan his exits well.

The pained question I see on his face, when I ask him to return is, “Why do you need jokes explained to you. Most jokes don’t survive explanations.” True, but some do. The presentation of some jokes requires explanation, whether that be due to a flawed presentation, or the inability of the listener to follow it well. Call those of us who require explanation stupid if you want, but if you’re going to come to us with a joke, be prepared to stick around for some of the questions.

On those occasions when the nature of his joke forced me to call Erik back, we would both look at each other with pained expressions. “I’m sorry,” my expression would say, “I just don’t get it.” Some of the times, he would come back and explain his joke to me, and we would be so uncomfortable that I felt compelled to laugh harder than I otherwise would have as an act of contrition for forcing him to provide follow-up. I ruined his exit, and we both knew it, so I felt the need to cover for this sense of violation.

After a number of violations on my part, Erik decided to exit to a location so far away that it would be inconceivable for me to call him back. I would still call him back, but he would pretend that he could no longer hear me. We would then share an uncomfortable look when he established the fact that he was not returning. You’re not ruining what I consider the perfect exit, his stance stated, to explain things to you in the manner I have far too many times before. You’re just going to have to figure this one out yourself. After committing a number of violations of this sort, I lost my stature in his joke telling world, as he no longer considered me his go-to when it came to telling great jokes. I can only assume he found someone who wouldn’t call him back.