Tag: humor

What’s So Funny?

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Why do we laugh? Why do we cry? “Confusion,” suggests author Kurt Vonnegut. “Laughter is similar to crying,” he said, “in that, in some cases, these are the only reactions we can find to react to that which otherwise confuses us.” How many times have we laughed at something shocking? How many times have we laughed when we didn’t know what else to do? How many times did we laugh, without taking the time to figure out the gist of the joke? How many times have we laughed and followed that up with a “Wait … What?” 

“What’s black and white, and red all over?” was a joke I found on a Bazooka Joe wrapper. “A newspaper!” I repeated that joke a number of times. I went into the punchline with what I believed to be the perfect pitch, and I hit that punch line perfectly, but I had a little secret: I didn’t get it. I asked those in my inner circle –those I knew would gracefully illuminate me how and why it was funny without attaching the public ridicule I probably deserved– to explain it to me. They couldn’t. They didn’t get it either. One person told me that they thought the ink newspapers use comes from a red-base. It didn’t think that was funny, but I was relieved that I finally had an answer. It was years later when someone finally told me that the joke involved the homophone spellings of red and read. Read, as in the in the past participle read, as in while a newspaper may have a white base, and black print, it is read all over, as opposed to the color red. If you got that joke right off the bat, congrats, but I assume that there has to be at least one joke that you retold that you didn’t get. The point is that we may actually laugh harder at jokes we don’t get than those we do, and that laughter may be an instinctual, fallback position to those things that confuse us.

How many of us asked a joke teller to explain a joke? We hate to do it, because we know it reveals us, and we hate to ruin another person’s joke by asking for an explanation, but some of the times, we need explanations. How many times has the explanation confused us to more and led to more laughter? Were we using this laughter to cover for the fact that we didn’t get it, or were we –as Vonnegut suggests– laughing more in conjunction with our confusion? Has this progression ever led us to find a joke genuinely hilarious without ever understanding it in the first place?

The relative nature of humor is obvious to anyone who has attempted to crack a joke, but the extremes are noteworthy. There are some universal truths to comedy, but for the most part comedy may be our most subjective art form. Individual experience leads us to finding relative humor in a subject, but it would be impossible for a comedic artist to try to relate to all of his audience members. Thus, it is incumbent on a qualified comedic artist to create funny.

Falling is funny. We all love a great fall, and no one is confused by its comedic value. Seeing Chevy Chase do what he did in the 70’s was a brand of humor he never had to explain. Stupid is funny. Abbot and Costello, John Ritter, and the Airplane/Naked Gun writers proved that by creating timeless humor with people falling and doing stupid things. Most comedians began their careers by falling, doing stupid things, and imitating famous people, but most of them realized, at some point, that they could only do those things for so long before they started to become a parody of themselves.

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I was too young to see Richard Pryor’s gestation cycle in comedy. I didn’t know the middlebrow, Bill Cosby-like Richard Pryor. I only knew the racial and radical comedian that launched himself from the pack to the stratosphere of comedy, but that didn’t mean I understood his brand of humor. I didn’t understand George Carlin or Cheech and Chong either. Knowledge and experience have taught me that Carlin and Pryor are funny, but how did I arrive at that answer? I have to imagine that Pryor and Carlin struggled to reach audiences when they first attempted to stretch their comedy beyond the border. I have to imagine they experienced pratfalls on their road to the hip, cool, dangerous, and edgy titles that their work would eventually assume. There had to be an inclusive group that “got it” that everyone wanted in on. Those people then had to teach other people, until those other people taught my people, and my people taught me that I if I didn’t “get it” too I faced ostracizing.

Cheech and Chong followed Carlin and Pryor through the doors they opened. They introduced some of their own elements to the brand, but for the most part, they owed a deep debt of gratitude to Carlin and Pryor. I learned these comedians were funny by watching my friends and my friend’s parents watch them. I was young and impressionable. I wanted to be hip and cool, and I wanted to understand adult humor. I learned that this material was innovative, and a tour-de-force and I learned that if I wanted to be all that I was hoping to be in life, I would have to laugh to tears at the things Cheech and Chong did.

“Man, you have got to see Up in Smoke,” my friends would say, “That thing is hilarious.” I watched it, but I didn’t get it. I didn’t get it, because I knew nothing about the drug world. I didn’t want people to know that, so I pretended to get it, and I put a lot of effort into pretending, because I didn’t want to be that naïve, little kid who didn’t understand. Later, while watching it with friends, I made sure to laugh in all the right places. I still didn’t get it, but they didn’t have to know that. They didn’t have to know I wasn’t hip or cool. It was my little secret.

I learned that drugs and sex were funny. Cussing was even funny after a while, because cussing was naughty. I became an adult, I had my own individual adventures in life, and I eventually learned that cussing, sex and drugs were funny because they were naughty. Naughty is funny, but it is playground funny. It is base humor, and some are satisfied providing base humor, but an artistic comedian needs to make it situational.

Situational humor is the: “I can’t believe he did this while doing that?” brand of humor that we all have to learn in life if we want to be cool and hip. Sex is funny, especially if you do it wrong and you’re willing to be self-effacing about it in front of a group of people. Farting is funny no matter where it occurs. Most of our most embarrassing biological functions are funny, because we all do them, and we can all relate, but if you can mix in a dash of the “Doing that while doing this?” element to the story, you can achieve hilarity. “I farted in church.” Funny? Maybe. It might be funnier than farting in Walgreen’s. “I farted in church after the priest said, this is the body of Christ, and I farted so loud everyone in the vicinity heard it.” That’s hilarious my friend. Time and place, my friend. Time and place. Stories of drug abuse are just as funny, as long as the we’re not currently doing it. We’ve agreed that it’s sad if someone is currently chasing demons, but if they say they did it in the past “while doing that” the next thing they will have to do is hire a manager to handle their bookings.

The guy under the Darth Vader mask, David Prowse, once admitted that he did more cocaine during the filming of the Star Wars movies than there is snow on Hoth. That’s not great comedy, until you factor in that Darth Vader was a character kids adored, and that Prowse did cocaine while playing the character … that’s funny. Really? Why? Because he was doing that while doing this. That’s hilarious. Because Prowse pulled the ultimate naughty … doing drugs while doing that? If someone says a joke about a mean mama, and your mama was mean, the comedian can reach you on your level, but how many of us have snorted a line of coke, or injected heroin in our veins, and why do we laugh so hard about that? The current strain of “doing that while doing this” involves adult comedians cussing in front of children? We love it when someone shocks us by breaking taboos, but George Carlin basically warned us that breaking taboos should be done carefully and strategically. He basically said that societal standards should always be respected and taboos should be carefully and gradually broken down, for once they’re all obliterated comedians will have nothing left to mock.

“If I fall down a manhole, that’s not funny. If you do, that’s funny,” Mel Brooks once said.

Jay Leno once mused that he didn’t understand why social, highbrow comedians felt a need to shake their audiences’ foundations and breakdown barriers. He said that he didn’t understand comedians bringing high-falootin’ sensibilities to their comedy. He said being a comedian is a wonderful profession that has two basic components: telling jokes and getting paid for it. “Well,” Larry David responded, “You (Leno) can think that, because you were good at it.”

Bob Hope and Jack Benny told jokes and got paid in their day, but theirs were different jokes, safer jokes, that appealed to fathers and sons alike. Benny and Hope did not seek to break boundaries or expose the culture’s sensitive underbelly. There were no sensibilities brought to their brand of humor. One would think that they would probably have a lot of trouble breaking through the ranks today. Hope told some risky jokes about Raquel Welch and Loni Anderson, but they were never so bold that they would offend a parent. Benny’s self-effacing humor would land him gigs in Omaha and Des Moines, but if he wanted in the upper echelon, he probably would’ve have to do some border stretching today. The difference between a Bob Hope and a Sam Kinison, or an Andrew Dice Clay, shows that humor evolves and changes over time.

Richard Pryor started out wanting to be the next Bill Cosby, but he realized there were limits to that, so he carved a niche out for himself. His primary goal was to tell jokes and get paid, but there came a point in his career where he realized that ultimate success could not be achieved through those traditional avenues. George Carlin was also one who could’ve stayed safe doing hippy, trippy weathermen, but he realized there was other territory out there for him to mine. Jim Carrey was a master impersonator, but he saw an end game to it, so he reinvented himself and his comedy. Andy Kaufman could’ve never made the stage with traditional comedy sets, so he decided not to be funny, and he hoped that we would laugh instinctively at the confusion he created.

These comedians, and others, have broken down barriers in our society. They’ve shaken our sensibilities and made us laugh at ourselves, and they’ve shaped our politics, our views on religion and music, how we treat our children, what we think of our parents, how we define our sexual mores, and if we were going to have a puritanical or a more permissive society. One could say that the power comedians wield in our society dates back to court jesters and beyond. Yet, even those court jesters had a pecking order that divided the talented from the untalented. We can assume that some of those jesters were so talented that they could tell a joke and get paid. Others recognized that they weren’t as talented, and they needed to carve out a niche for the untalented that didn’t rely on imitating and falling, and they most likely had to teach the king a new brand of comedy that relied on the natural human instinct to laugh when confused.

He Used to Have a Mohawk

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“Mark is a good man,” the best man said, before raising his glass in a toast, “but he used to have a mohawk.”

The maid of honor echoed the best man’s sentiment, “I like Mark. I found out he used to have a mohawk, and I found out that he even colored it blue at one time. I couldn’t believe it. He seems so nice.”

What odd, seemingly contradictory, things to say, I thought when Mark’s friends finished their toasts. The best man was presumably on Mark’s best friends list, and the maid of honor clearly had a spot in her heart for Mark now, after presumably spending time around him as one of the bride’s best friends. Yet, these two chose to introduce us to Mark in a manner that suggested that there might be something wrong with people who have their hair cut into a mohawk, but not Mark. He’s nice. It was the theme of their intro and they added to it throughout the toast. We found out that not only did Mark have a mohawk at a time in his life, but he also colored it blue for a time and at another time, he spiked it eight inches high. No matter what form his hair took, however, he was always nice, and he would talk to you just like any other feller.

Mark appeared to take this all in stride. Either he agreed with the sentiment of the theme, or he didn’t hear the underlying condescension. Whatever the case, Mark appeared to miss the associations, the looks, and the reactions to his mohawk days.

I attended this ceremony at the behest of my uncle, who was quite fond of the bride. He met the man who used to have a mohawk a couple of times, and he thought Mark was nice, but he did not know him well. As such, he did not know if the haircut was a result of some sort of an identity crisis, or a psychology that chased Mark after he relented to chop it off and begin mingling with common folk again.

Based on the idea that my one conduit into Mark’s mind was almost as unfamiliar with him as I was, I was forced to draw on personal experience with like-minded souls to try and dig into Mark’s essence. The obvious goal of adorning one’s body with an attention-drawing tattoo or a hairstyle, such as a mohawk, is to gain attention, but hearing all that I heard at this wedding reception and watching Mark react to it, I realized that might only be half of it. I thought Mark’s goal might have been to change the perception he had of being a wallflower who sits in the corner of a party and doesn’t know what to do with his hands. My bet, based on my own experience, was that Mark could attend a party, and no one would remember him being there. 

To distinguish themselves, those similar to Mark try to establish some sort of association. They might start by displaying a fiery temper, so others say, “Don’t mess with Jed, he’s insane.” If that display doesn’t work, they feel compelled to provide a visual to promote it with a quick mean-faced punch. I’ve even witnessed some going so far as to say such things about themselves with the hope of kick starting such a reputation. They don’t conclude this with “Tell your friends,” but the end game is obvious to those on the receiving end. If this chain of events does not produce the desired effect, the ornaments of self-expression begin to appear, that take the form of physical shouts of ‘I am here!’ from their otherwise anonymous corners.

I’ve heard some mohawks speak of sitting in front of a mirror, for over an hour to gel those eight-inch spikes up just right, to achieve the perception that is almost exclusive to an eight-inch Mohawk. The unspoken goal is to entice someone, somewhere to look at them. Some might consider them strange, but at least they’re looking. Some might ask questions, but at least they’re asking. Some might even ostracize them, but even that is evidence of concerted effort directed toward them.

“For God’s sakes, Helen, the boy’s got a blue mohawk!” a senior citizen, unfiltered by social graces, might say to his wife. The rest of us whisper it for fear that a mohawk man may hear and feel further estranged, but in my personal experience, they love it all. Mark, we can only speculate, was no different.

“It turns out Mark has a great heart,” the best man said to complete his best man toast, “who would give you the shirt off his back.” At one point in his toast, the best man said that he was, “Attracted to Mark, because Mark used to have a Mohawk. It wasn’t one of those flat, more acceptable Mohawks either. This one was spiky, and eight-inches high. It was even blue at one point. This was a Mohawk!”

The best man laid a deft, joke teller’s emphasis on the words ‘was’ and ‘mohawk’ to punctuate his joke. He received some laughter for the effort, but there was nothing raucous about it because there was nothing raucous, shocking, or rebellious about Mark anymore. The mohawk was gone.

Men with sensible haircuts now felt so comfortable with Mark that they felt free to laugh at him without fear. They thought they were now laughing with him, and he had to sit there and take it, nodding in silent vulnerability from his proverbial corner of the room. His nod had an unspoken “Yep!” to it that suggested either Mark regretted giving up the mohawk, or that he regretted trying it out in the first place. My money was on the former.

In the years since this wedding, I’m betting that Mark still tells people, “I’m an old, married man now, but I used to have a Mohawk, and it was eight inches high, and it was even blue at one time,” when they ask him questions about himself.

The ceremony that preceded those odd, contradictory toasts was also unorthodox, but one look at Mark and his bride Mary, should’ve informed any observer that they were, at the very least, in for something unorthodox. Then again, most of the attendees were unorthodox too. The church was unorthodox, and it appeared to have seen its best days thirty years prior, but unorthodox can be quaint, and quaint can be romantic, and colorful, and the best way for two people to express their unique, and unorthodox love for one another in a quaint, memorable way.

Those of us who put some thought into it found that unorthodox core and appreciated it for what it was. We believed that we grasped the individualistic statement Mark and Mary wanted to make to one another and their friends and family. We thought there was something unique and beautiful about the ceremony, and that something influenced us to think about the ways in which we could make our own individualistic statements in our own ceremonies. I went through all of that, but my appreciation of what Mark and Mary accomplished ended when two singers stepped to the mic stands positioned at the side of the altar.

The songs performed by two teenage girls sang weren’t Gershwin or Schubert. They were as hip and nice as Mark and Mary wanted the congregation to believe they were. The songs were informal, and the best way Mary could find to express her love for this man who used to have a mohawk. The songs were also terrible.

A song can provide a beautiful bridge to any ceremony. In a ceremony as special and meaningful as a wedding, a song can enhance the overall theme, and further personalize the message the bride and groom are trying to establish in their ceremony. The best-case scenario, learned by way of the contrast offered by Mark and Mary’s union, is to condense these songs to a few meaningful lyrics, or a meaningful portion of the song, that the couple hopes will capture the essence of their ceremony.

Wedding organizers should maintain focus on the song’s refrain to establish some familiarity with the audience, but these same organizers should avoid including the entire song. I’ve argued to the contrary. We all have. As an enthusiastic music fan who regards some songs in the devout manner some view religion, I have a list of songs that I regard as unique definitions of who I am. I’ve fantasized about using them in my ceremonies, to provide my friends and family members a window into my soul. Common sense has prevailed upon me though, and logic tells me these moments might not be the time or the place to proselytize on the virtues of the undiscovered, aberrant songs I enjoy.

Mark and Mary obviously did not receive such objective perspectives, and the audience had to endure the songs that these tone deaf, teenage girls sang in a kitschy, wonderfully amateurish, and endearing, and embarrassing manner. I could hear their earnest effort, but it didn’t work for me. I can’t sing, and I do harbor some empathy for anyone attempting to do anything artistic in a public forum, but that display made me cringe.

“But, it was sung from the heart,” a sympathetic listener might have said, in an effort to give this rendition of whatever song they sang endearing qualities. “Fine,” I would say, “Keep it under two minutes.”

“But this was Mark and Mary’s ceremony,” they might have countered, “and even if it was unorthodox, it was unorthodox to your conformist orthodoxy, and who put you in the seat of professional critic. Get over yourself man!”

The duet sang a second song, ten minutes in. The second song was as painful as the first, yet another interruption the flow of the ceremony. It was agony for those of us that didn’t know Mark and Mary, and it altered a moment the bride and groom were supposed to cherish into the introductory segment of one of those singing contest, reality shows in which all of the singers showcased are so bad that we all enjoy condemning them for how bad they are. 

Bereft of Brevity

The groom was so shaken up during the wedding ceremony that he couldn’t maintain his composure while reciting his vows. The evidence that Mark wanted this moment was so palpable that all but the cold-hearted felt it. I was so into this ceremony, and so deep into my effort to understand this man from afar, that his tears moved me. I considered the idea that Mark thought if he could get this one moment in his life right, it might help him move beyond whatever drove him to get a mohawk in the first place. I thought about those precious few moments we all have to rewrite the course we’re on, and I thought about what we do when they arrive. I also thought that if such a moment did exist for Mark, it was gone. In its place were two four-minute songs that the bride selected for this ceremony, to attempt to make the moment even more seminal than it might have otherwise been.

The bride, the groom, and the priest stood up there like jackasses, staring at one another while those two songs dragged out to four minutes each. Four minutes may not seem long, unless you’re the one trying to make more of this moment than it might otherwise have.

Less is more when we’re seeking a moment, I realized, watching as all of the moments failed to accumulate into something seminal. A seminal moment occurs when one is engaged in a moment, and no amount of choreographing will move it there. We can try, and we shouldn’t fall prey to the less-is-more principle to a point that we do nothing, but as we continue to add moments in the hope of achieving the seminal, we encroach upon a tipping point.

That tipping point may never become apparent to those who choreographed their moment. If it does become apparent, that clarity often arrives soon after it’s too late to change, and the only people who learn anything from it are those who witness the fact that brevity allows all participants to define the beauty for us, and with us, through the contrast of our efforts.

When we lose our moments, or see them redefined, we try to take them back. Cheesy, choreographed lyrics about tenderness, togetherness, love, and always being there for one’s partner, appear beautiful and thematic on paper. In reality, they’re show-stopping, moment stealing, and over-wrought ideas that we later come to regret, even if we refuse to admit it. We find ourselves trying to disassemble and reassemble our moment any way we can, until our ability to take it back and relive those seminal moments lead us to ache for the days when we used to have a mohawk.

The Leans

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Have you ever experienced a mean case of The Leans? I’m talking about entering into confined quarters and moving left to get passed someone and they move left, and then you move right only to have that person move right. If you’re too embarrassed to admit it, just know, no one is immune. It affects the the old, the young, the healthy and unhealthy, and everyone in between. The Leans are always embarrassing, and as the story below shows, they can be humiliating. My advice is to either continue going right, or just send still. Don’t over think it. If you do, you’ll go left. I write this cautionary tale to anyone thinking that the antidote is to simply go the opposite direction, because, mark my words, that’s what they’re thinking. Most of these terribly embarrassing situations can be avoided if we learn to just stand still. I’ve advised some victims, and I’ve even screamed it on occasion, but no one listens. 

I could’ve and should’ve alerted Andy Parizek to this cure, or the other brilliant antidote you’ll learn later, but there was so much going on with Andy’s exit, his momentum, and his plans for leaving a glorious trail behind him that I felt anything I did would only further his embarrassment and ruin his moment. 

“You in my lane (Get out my lane)
You in my way (Get out my way)
You crossed that line
It ain’t yo’ day.”

Tedashii

“This is it,” Andrew Parizek said crouching down beside my desk. I was listening to music in my earbuds, so I didn’t sense his approach. By the time he said that, Andrew was so close he startled me. He was a close talker normally, but on this afternoon, he narrowed his normally uncomfortable distance to the point that I could smell the cool ranch Doritos he had for lunch. “My final farewell to you, my friend,” he added. “I’m leaving the company. I’m on my way out the door.”

“Oh shoot,” I said to Andy Parizek, my co-worker and close associate. I don’t think Andy would even call our relationship a friendship. When we had a go-between, we were close, but when that third party changed jobs, I never thought I’d talk to him again.  Yet, Andrew kept coming over to talk about the stupid stuff that we stupid people talk about. “It was great working with you buddy,” I told him.

This “Final Farewell” occurred in stages over the course of two weeks. Two weeks prior, we discussed his departure at his going away party. One week later, he and I discussed his imminent departure in greater detail, and we also discussed his future at length. We shared brief discussions about the people we knew and the good times we shared. We also talked about how we would miss the little things we both did to brighten the other’s otherwise boring days. We didn’t hug at the end of those discussions, but we engaged in a hearty, heartfelt handshake that physically expressed how we felt about one another.

Everything I said in those farewells were said in the spirit of a conversation that recognized it as the last time we might speak, but his presence at my desk informed me that those notions were premature. “It won’t be the same around here without you,” I said, as I had in the other farewells, but I felt compelled to add original material to this one. I don’t remember what I added, but it involved some sentimental junk that I didn’t mean. I was being nice, and I was trying to make Andrew feel important in my life. I liked the guy, but we weren’t what anyone would call this close, not multiple-farewells-close.

“Are you excited about this move?” I asked him, and he told me he was, and then he told me why he was excited. “I’m so jealous,” I said. I wasn’t jealous, as Andrew was moving onto a career that I didn’t want to do, but it seemed like a fitting sentiment to add to this final version of our final farewell. “You’ll succeed,” I said, “because you’re a great guy and a hard worker.” I meant that. “Are you a little scared about the prospect of leaving the comfy confines our company? I know it’s what you want to do, and all that, but you’re venturing out into an unknown world where the prospect of failure is greater.” He said yes to all of the above. Then he launched.

He spelled out for me, in explicit detail, this new venture of his life. He did so with magnificence and aplomb. He was also magnanimous. He spoke about how he he found me delightful, and the type who would succeed, and that if I stuck to it, all my dreams would come true. It was as sappy and weird as you imagine. I hid my revulsion for his word choices. He tried to be multisyllabic, and he used as many –ly words as he had in his vocabulary to instill a sense of timeless quality to this final version of his “Final Farewell”. If it were a speech, it might have caused emotional responses. The audience might have been applauding at the end, some may have cried, and others may have even stood to applaud. The over the top farewell was one that often elicits such near-compulsory emotion. Andrew lit up in moments where ‘dreams can come true’ lines poured out of him. When the line “If it can happen for me, it can happen for anyone” brought him to crescendo, I might have reached for a handkerchief if I had emotions.

It was so over-the-top brilliant, coupled with subtle attempts at self-deprecating humor, that I wondered if Andrew plagiarized the material he prepared for this from one of the soldiers’ “going to war” letters that Ken Burns compiled for his The Civil War documentary. If it wasn’t, I felt safe in my assumption that Andrew practiced and rehearsed this speech that day, before a mirror. Whatever the case was, I felt compelled to inform him that I thought this version of the final farewell was an “Experience for anyone lucky enough to hear it,” “Your best, final farewell since final farewell number two,” and a “Tour de Force!” I didn’t say any of this, but I felt Andrew Parizek choreographed his speech in a manner that warranted such superlatives.

Andrew and I got along on so many levels that receiving an invitation to his going away party wasn’t a big surprise. When I arrived and Andrew offered me relatively little attention compared to his closer friends, it didn’t wound me. I thought he offered me as much attention as our association warranted.

This Casablanca-style parting was just way beyond protocol as far as I was concerned though. Once I got passed the idea that it didn’t matter that Andrew already said goodbye to me a couple times, I politely listened to his spiel as if for the first time. We exchanged email addresses so we could keep updated on each other’s lives. I knew that wouldn’t happen, but I thought it was a nice sentiment. He then concluded with another note about how nervous he was about his future, but he was just as excited by it.

By the time he began to step away, he was all but yelling good wishes to me. 

My mouth wasn’t open, but the display did set me back a pace, and then it happened …

Andrew Parizek entered into a wicked case of the leans with my desk neighbor, as she entered into the aisle he was exiting. He leaned left to get past her, she leaned left, and when he leaned to the right, she leaned right. Before they finally made it past one another, they performed four separate and distinct leans.

If Andrew was extracting himself from a casual conversation, and exiting the aisle in a routine manner, he might have been able to avoid the spectacle that ended up occurring. If he felt no need to execute a departure to be earmarked in the annals of time for those “who were there” to witness his ride into the sunset, I suspect he would’ve been the gentleman he always was and stepped aside to allow my female desk neighbor to pass. At worst, the two of them may have engaged in two leans, if it wasn’t Andrew’s hope that this “The Final Farewell” include women waving handkerchiefs and someone, somewhere saying, “You know what, there goes one hell of a good feller” this probably wouldn’t have happened. I assume that Andrew pictured the rest of us as side characters in his exit, left behind to chronicle the attributes of the main character of the “The Final Farewell” scene.

I don’t keep a ledger on such things, but I do believe that the Andrew Parizek v. desk neighbor case of the leans was the most intense I’ve ever witnessed. I’ve seen a number of severe cases in my day, and I’ve ever been a party to a few, but I don’t think I witnessed four separate and distinct leans prior to that day.

The one thing we know about the public humiliation that results from a case of leans is that no one gets out alive. Most people try to find some way to quell the embarrassment, but I’ve witnessed some get angry. “Get out of my way!” they shout, in an unsuccessful attempt to divert the humiliation to follow to the other party. I saw one person grab the other person by the shoulders and gently usher them right, so they could pass left. I’ve seen some giggle at their own foolishness, and I’ve seen some try to change the subject as quick as they can. None of it works. No one gets out alive.

The one exception to the rule I heard about involved a nondescript, middle-aged, restaurant hostess named Susan. I should note that I didn’t witness Susan’s case of the leans, but I heard about it. I heard about it so often enough that I know all of the details by heart. Susan fell prey to three separate and distinct leans with another co-worker. She was able maintain an unprecedented modicum of dignity in the midst of her episode, and she did it with three simple words: “Shall we dance?”

The witnesses to this event said she said it in the second of what would be a reported, and corroborated, three leans. The witnesses of this episode would later swear that she said those three words with a glint in her eye. The glint was faint, they would report, and it was a little insecure, but the observers suggested that they thought Susan knew exactly what she was doing.

What she was doing is subject to interpretation, of course, as this woman named Susan maintained a degree of humility that prevented her from addressing the full import of her purported casual salvo against future ridicule. Those who heard Susan issue this phrase swore that Susan knew exactly what she was doing when she set those of us who would fall prey to our own case of the leans in the future, free from the ridicule and embarrassment that follows our own episodes.

We can only assume that Susan suffered similar ridicule for much of her life, and that it bothered her so much that she sought to put an end to it. If that wasn’t the case, it might have had something to do with Susan’s hope that the line “Shall we dance” might provide a remedy for future sufferers. Her hope, we can only guess, was that the witnesses of this episode would spread the word to put an end to this scale of human suffering. Whatever the case was, this unassuming restaurant hostess provided those who were lucky enough to be there that day, and those who later heard about it, a shield against public scorn that we would use the rest of our lives. We might not have carried it off with the grace and dignity Susan displayed, but we would always think of her, and silently thank her, for freeing us from this ever-present spectacle in our lives.

Had Andrew Parizek learned of this antidote prior to his case of the leans, it might have spared him the humiliation. I doubted it at the time, and I still do, for I considered Susan’s humorous quip an antidote to two, and in her case three, separate and distinct leans, but I wasn’t sure that even her ingenious response could shield someone from the public fallout of four.

Four separate and distinct leans were so unprecedented, to my mind, that I doubt there is a sufficient antidote. Couple that with the fact with the Gone with the Wind-style, dramatic exit that Andrew hoped to execute preceding it, and I doubt that any clever quip would’ve permitted him to save face. His only recourse was to walk away and just hope that witnesses would forget it soon after it happened.

Andrew Parizek was an “always a bridesmaid, never a bride” fella. Everyone I knew liked him. He was a likable guy, but no one I knew connected with him on so many levels that they would regularly seek him to hang out, or consider him a best buddy. He was one of those guys who was always there but never the focus in the room. Andrew Parizek, to be brutally honest, wasn’t the type of guy we remember, and perhaps that’s all he wanted when he delivered so many final farewells to so many people that he accidentally said goodbye to the same people more than twice. I don’t know how much preparation he put into his final farewells, but I’m sure he did it so that he could let each of us know how important we were to him to hopefully have the sentiment returned. This is not to suggest that Andrew’s actions were self-serving, but everyone wants those who were around them to remember that we were here. It is possible that had Andrew escaped unencumbered by my desk neighbor, his final farewell might have had the lasting effect on me he hoped for, but the lasting memory I now have of him consists of him shucking and jiving with my desk neighbor, trying to get past her, for a dramatic ride off into the sunset.