Why something funny? Why not just something true?

Where I get my inspiration-- and how this publication's title was born.

I’ve been working on my bachelor’s degree for three years now. It’s slow going when you’re only going part-time (first I was working full-time, and now I’m taking care of a toddler full-time). I’ve made my peace with this fact, and also with the fact that I’m now roughly 8-10 years older than most of my classmates. Usually this makes no difference, but recently as we were studying creative nonfiction in my current English class, I realized I was the only student in the room who had heard of David Sedaris.

I could insert something obnoxiously crotchety in here about Youths These Days and the Cultural Impact of Humor Writers in the Shaping of American Literature but I’m trying to be cool and “with it” so I’ll just do what I (almost) did in class and keep my mouth shut.

Anyway, so we were studying Sedaris’ brilliant essay on lapses in translation, “Jesus Shaves,” which is about his fumbling experiences in French class and how difficult it is to explain Western holiday traditions in a language that is not your own. After reading and discussing the essay from our textbooks, we listened to an audio recording of Sedaris reading a version of the piece for “This American Life.” You can listen here if you’re so inclined and want a chuckle from a writer much more skilled than I. 

“What did you think of the live reading versus the printed version?” the professor asked us. Most students enjoyed the live version, but one fellow in the back said he thought Sedaris ought to stick to writing and not try any harder at stand-up comedy. “He’s just not very good. Not punchy enough.”

At the risk of being silently compared by my peers to the know-it-all student Sedaris complains about in his essay (the one who raised her hand so frequently that her shoulder gave out), I turned around at this juncture. “David Sedaris isn’t a stand-up comedian,” I said, swallowing the “well, actually” that tried to preface this remark. “He’s an essayist. A humor writer. It’s a whole different form of comedy. He’s not trying to make every sentence into a punchline; he’s trying to make you see things in a different light and laugh while you’re thinking about them.”

Okay, the explanation was probably a little less concise when I said it out loud. I’ve had time to word it better as I wrote this piece. I’ve also had time to parse out exactly why I enjoy Sedaris’ style (although admittedly some of his work isn’t to my taste). He relies on everyday observations to find humor, and though he employs exaggeration and satire from time to time, the comedy is rooted in reality. This idea– comedy rooted in reality– is what I strive to do in my own writing, and why my Substack is called “Something Funny, Something True.” 

In a way, this approach to humor reminds me of the late great Jeanne Robertson, a humorist and public speaker who was careful not to be mistaken for a stand-up comic. Her genuine Southern charm didn’t make fun of other people (except perhaps her husband from time to time, but she avowed it didn’t hurt his feelings) but she had a knack for laughing at herself. 

Robertson maintained that she didn’t lead an unusually humorous life, and the experiences she’d relate– with the exception of her youthful stint as Miss North Carolina in the 1960s– weren’t extraordinary. (One of my favorites is her gone-awry New York City outfit that featured a stylish black pashmina.) When asked how she found material for her talks, she emphasized looking for humor in stressful situations. When her husband bought far too many cake ingredients, when their house flooded in a carpet-cleaning-gone-wrong catastrophe, when a river rafting trip was a lot less glamorous than advertised, Robertson found the funny bits and brought them to life to make other people laugh. 

Though good writing and truly funny comedy can often spring from the absurd and totally ridiculous, I find myself returning again and again, in both reading and writing, to that which is pulled from the everyday muck. (“Muck,” by the way, is my toddler’s latest new word. He’s very gleeful about it and laughs uproariously whenever he sees mud or gravel in the great outdoors. Because dirt exists, I guess? And he can pronounce one of the names for it? Who knows. He’s two. But it’s the perfect blend of down-to-earth observation and amusement, and he relishes it.)

When this now-toddler was an infant, my husband and I were running on very little sleep and struggling to keep our sanity. I still vividly remember one night when we were tag-teaming a particularly messy diaper change and I felt as though I were running on fumes. Displeased by the cold breeze that hit his nether regions as we pulled off his tiny sleeper, my son screwed up his face and lifted his hands above his head, displaying his armpit to our bent-close faces. It was like thumbing his nose– or employing a ruder gesture to show disgust– made all the more hilarious by the fact that the perpetrator was two weeks old and had no concept of body language. We laughed until we cried– something I’d been doing a lot in those tough postpartum days, but this version was a healing balm. I don’t remember many particulars of the crying sessions, but the laughter stands out. 

In Beverly Cleary’s memoir about her childhood years, A Girl From Yamhill, she recounts her mother’s advice whenever she would write an essay for school or a contest. “Make it funny,” her mother would say every time, no matter the subject. This suggestion carried over into Cleary’s adult writing, when she became one of America’s most beloved authors of children’s books that focus on humorous everyday situations. (Ramona Quimby’s egg-on-the-head in the third grade cafeteria comes to mind.) Cleary reflects in A Girl From Yamhill that her mother, Mabel Bunn, had a hard life but was always ready to be distracted, amused, lifted out of her Depression penny-pinching daily grind and given a reason to laugh. Their relationship was a difficult one, but the escapism her mother found in reading humorous stories must have greatly influenced Cleary’s later work.

As I pondered all this and typed notes into my phone with a single finger and half an eye, (the rest of my vision fixed on my son, who was diligently climbing playground slides), it felt somehow comforting. The day I’d had– starting with the Sedaris essay in class, admittedly enjoyable, but followed up by multiple writing rejections in my inbox that afternoon, then a loud and long post-nap toddler tantrum– hadn’t been nearly as tough as some of the days Mabel Bunn went through. But the memory of the line about “bits of information that would have given the pope an aneurysm” was still making me smile despite my frustrations and general writing malaise. (Could you tell that was going on? I haven’t published much in the last few months, and keep referencing rejections. It’s not subtle.)

It’s still hard to find humor in the midst of a small child’s meltdowns (although I’ve had some success in laughing about that sort of thing after the fact), but most days have a scrap of humor hanging around somewhere if you look hard enough. And when you find it– and write about it– it makes the story better. Even when it’s a detail as small as translating “cross” as “two morsels of lumber.” Or how to FLING a pashmina so it stays in place. Or making a homemade crown out of chestnut burrs and then being unable to remove it. Or a toddler yelling “muck” and chortling over his own cleverness– and a mom at her wits’ end trying to hang onto that happy memory when same toddler is screaming and flailing because chocolate is not an option for dinner.

We all have true stories to tell, but I think we all have something funny in us, too. 

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As you may have gathered (since it is not yet the beginning of a new month) I am trying out a new feature of a mid-month special edition: a short essay just for you. I’d love to hear what you think. If this venture is successful, I’ll need to update my header. “A semi-regular newsletter of links and musings?” “A sporadic update with varying levels of thoughtfulness and linkitude?” There’s time to work on that. I’ll keep you posted. But if you enjoyed this special-edition essay just for Substack subscribers, would you consider forwarding it to a friend? Person-to-person recommendation lets me expand my platform without relying on social media, and I greatly appreciate your help with that!