I have a couple of thoughts on the issue of jokes and the telling thereof. They are not all good thoughts, but if the jokes told to us can make us laugh, that’s good because laughter I’m told, is healthy. They say it cures lots of illnesses. But alas, not all jokes result in real laughter and not all jokes deserve healthy laughter.

I am a disastrous failure at telling jokes, always embarrassing myself, all my attempts falling horribly flat, and I rarely even get the ones told to me, forcing me to engage in fake mercy laughter. And high on my list of things I hate is fake laughter. Makes me cringe, no one can ever make fake laughter sound real, and there’s a whole lot of it to be heard when some bozo takes it upon himself to regale people with a bunch of dud jokes. We well-breds like to be polite so we do the mercy laughter thing, but it’s painfully obvious we’re faking it.

Frankly, I hate being with joke tellers, especially when they say, “oh you’ll just DIE LAUGHING when you hear THIS one!” No, I will not die laughing, but I definitely will hate hearing it. That “you’ll die laughing” thing is a controlling set-up, suggesting that if we don’t fall down choking with laughter then there’s something wrong with us.

And by the way, I hate the comedians who spew endless filth because they can. I do remember the first time I heard the F-bomb spoken in a movie and I howled with laughter. Now? No. These so called “entertainers” seem to struggle to get more disgusting, offensive and filthy with each performance. The pressure must be awful to have to constantly out-gross themselves. I’m such a geezer that I used to fall to pieces when Hennie Youngman played that violin and told jokes in between musical interludes. He was a scream. “Take my wife; please.” Early Martin and Lewis made my sides ache. Sid and Imogene. Berle. Burns and Allen. Laurel and Hardy. Carol Burnett and gang always. They and their ilk really made me laugh loud and long. I miss them so much, and none of them ever told a “dirty” joke, rarely even told a racist joke and never ever used the now over-done F-bomb. So please friends, don’t tell me any jokes where I have to fake laugh because I’m not so good at it and I am ashamed of myself for even doing it at all.

Now then, just because I’ve taken this big moral stand, I will confess even I appreciate a well-crafted raunchy joke. Just remember that I can tend to go blank because the part of my brain wired for joke-understanding got mis-wired somewhere along the way. Perhaps I’ve gotten so old and curmudgeonly that I just cut people out of my life who I discover are overly raunchy or worse, racist, even if they’ve been on my A – list for years. I guess it just took me a while to clue in. I recall how I used to often have lunch with a guy, a very funny man I really liked, who never let on that he possessed this feculent flaw. And then, bit by bit emails with gradually “funny” racist themes kept coming from him. At first, I thought I’d misunderstood, and so didn’t react. But then I gradually realized I’d been had, and I got my young grandson to block that former “friend” from my computer and stopped taking his calls. Eventually, I had to be courageous and tell him why I was avoiding him. He responded by telling me he was “only kidding” and that I had no sense of humor. Wrong. I have a way over-developed funny bone, but what he was saying and emailing was not humorous. It hurt people.

It was pretty shocking for me to realize that stuff was still out there when I, crazy naïve LC, thought we Americans were better than that. That former lunch companion of mine is an elderly guy and maybe he thinks “hey, I’m old now and can say whatever I think, and damn it, I will.” No. I think as older people we can be freer, but not free to damage people or to give ourselves permission to perpetuate racism or any negative hurtful isms out there. Because we’re older we do not get a pass. If those people with their hateful, vicious and negative thoughts have been able to successfully suppress them for years making us all believe they were the good guys, then they can just keep on suppressing. Just because they’ve gotten older, they have no right to spew.

So there you have it folks, my feelings on jokes, racism and fake laughter, for what it’s worth. You’re allowed to agree.

LC Van Savage is a local writer. Contact her at LCVS@comcast.net, or visit LCVanSavage.com.