And Now for Something Completely Different

By Barbara Groark

So where are our old comedians from the class of 1968? Don’t we need an hour or half-hour of comedy cabaret for reunion weekend? Where’s Greg Micucci? Steve Boyle? Ken Fenimore? Bill Elliott? Who am I forgetting? Do you realize some of these very same people have children who are graduates of HCHS? That's pretty serious. And how about some people who didn’t used to be funny – maybe they were too appalled to speak back then – but now they ready to speak up? Step forward to the Reunion Committee when you get the chance. At the moment they have a DJ ready for that Saturday night but are loose as to the rest of the entertainment.

Comedy has changed a bit since 1968. “Blue” comedy was always there in the minority, but a decade or so ago there seemed to be nothing else out there. I remember the time my sisters and I decided to take my mother to a comedy club as a treat for her maybe 70th birthday. The club was in the former Sheraton Hotel on Route 70 – sounds classy, right? We however all sat at a nice booth with some drinks and waited, comedian after comedian, for something funny to be said or done. We left early and apologized to Mom, who took it in stride.

Why is it that women generally don’t find bathroom and body function humor to be that funny? Is it because most of them have changed so many diapers in their time (and most fathers who are participators know how to change them too), they’d rather think about something else? And how often can you laugh at the same four-letter words, even in a nervous way?

But I have to admit, now that I’m – well you know how old I am – my sense of humor is adjusting some. For example, I used to hate The Three Stooges, but now I think they’re kind of sweet after doing some research on Comedy Central a few years ago. Is it something about reaching middle age that allows a woman to reconcile with her inner 10-year-old boy? And if you get a chance to see the Disney Goofy World of Sports, particularly the baseball game, you might enjoy it. I used to hate Goofy too, always doing things wrong, but now in adulthood, I appreciate the pratfalls and slapstick much more. They don’t remind me of any old boss or someone I used to know, but of myself walking into walls and blindly barreling over a cliff.

I still hate and won’t watch Funniest Home Videos though. Some of these people look like they actually are being injured.

But the reason we took our mother to the comedy club is that she is the funny person of the family, and also the most organized. And a lot of comedy is playing with a sense of order by turning it upside down. Growing up at our house, we had our assignments, but then were free to play and dance and kid around within the framework. In fact, I usually judge a comedian on television by the standards established at our family dinner table, particularly the weeknight meal in the kitchen.

Here’s a typical mealtime. Ten minutes before dinner would be ready, my mother would call one of the older three or four girls (I’m oldest) to set the table and fix drinks. Most weeknights this was milk for all the children. Mom would have no beverage with her meal but would have a teapot steeping for after dinner. In summer, the assignee would fix the iced tea, which was homemade and cooling on the window sill in a large pot. The assignee would remove the tea bags, measure the right amount of sugar and lemon juice, after squeezing the lemons, and pour the mixture into a large pitcher. She would then get the glasses down from the cabinet, fill them with ice cubes, and pour the tea. Milk was much simpler, but beyond toddler stage, we all had iced tea in the summer.

Then we’d all be called to sit down at our assigned seats and wait the few minutes for the food to be put on the table. We could sip our drinks. We might eat salad if there was one. We had to be good. We were not allowed to fight or argue, but we were allowed to talk and be funny. In fact, that was the point of dinner time, to make each other laugh. Our audience level was wide ranging, from pretty darn smart to a future Special Olympics participant. Some of the content was the usual family chiding and joking over the events of the day, but we weren’t allowed to call anyone stupid or be mean. We had to stay within a certain volume and language level, since Mom was within reach just at the counter. Some of this was pretty funny. If you’ve ever attended the birthday party of a ten-year-old, boy or girl, you know what I mean.

When Mom sat down we would decide on which direction to pass the food, or else Mom would serve each plate, in reverse birth order, youngest first, if there was a hot casserole or spaghetti. I learned how to bide my time that way. When everyone had food, usually one of us would say grace, with a sign of the cross to open and a sign of the cross to close, and then we could begin eating. Grace has an effect similar to that of the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of the school day or the Star-Spangled Banner at the beginning of a ball game: to serve as a reminder to be on good behavior, to remember our table manners, to calm any high jinks that might be going on for the period of the meal. And incidentally to thank God for our daily bread. We would now eat in peace, no elbows on the table, no reaching.

On some unusual occasions, there might be an incident outside the rules of decorum. My sister Kathleen (by the way now a CPA living in South Carolina with her daughter) one time had an exchange with my mother at the table such that Kathleen for her own safety bolted from the table and ran out one kitchen doorway, through the dining room, past the other kitchen doorway, and up the stairs. My mother was seated next to that second kitchen doorway. She picked up her glass of iced tea. She moved through the doorway to the foot of the stairs. Kathleen stood at the top of the stairs looking down, out of my mother’s reach, daring her to chase her, ready to run into her bedroom. My mother faked a throw of the full glass of iced tea. We all laughed at the idea, a little relieved she was feeling more mischievous than angry.

Then she leaped halfway up the steps and actually did throw the full contents of the iced tea glass at Kathleen, getting her soaked, with some dripping on the gold carpet. A moment of shocked silence on everyone’s part, including Kate’s, was followed by a burst of laughing from everyone, including my mother. The problem of Kate’s cold, wet clothes was solved somehow. I don’t remember when the rug was cleaned up, probably the next morning by Herself while we were at school.

Comedy tweaks the authorities, pokes at pomposity wherever it shows up, allows people to commiserate about problems in their lives without killing anybody. It should be some kind of medicine. The best comic includes himself in the joke. He’s also only human. Otherwise, he’s just a harridan.

However, some medicine is like a vaccination – a little of the disease injected so the antibodies against it can be created. A few years ago, I took my mother and her sister Mary, both in their eighties now and both still alert to politics, to see the movie Primary Colors, a political movie that, among other things, satirized the language used by a set of people who uses the f-bomb as a noun, adjective, verb, and conjunction. The characters were all young and well-educated but must have lived in fear of their lives every day – I personally reserve the expletive for the rare instances when my life is threatened, such as being cut off while driving in traffic. And I never heard my mother or Aunt Mary use the word, though a few hells and damns have passed their lips. So I was a little sheepish in the first few minutes in the theatre and kept glancing at them in the dark to gauge their reactions. But after a while, they started laughing and rolling their eyes and shaking their heads. They did get what I believe the writers were doing: like kids in the school yard, or in a family of brothers and/or sisters, the writers were saying “Look, here’s you –” and mimicking someone’s behavior – possibly in the hope of possibly correcting it? Maybe that’s it.

And as the final credits were rolling at the end and we stood up to leave the theatre, my Aunt Mary said clearly, “That was a fucking good movie.”

But the word did not become part of her regular vocabulary, as it possibly would with a ten-year-old who got a laugh with it.