Funny

My boyfriend often tells me, “you’ve got the funniest head.” I think this is because you can read anything that I’m thinking in my face—a quality that is both a joy and at times a recipe for disaster. It is difficult for me to conceal my thoughts, because they’re legible on my face, usually before I even know what I’m thinking. So, I’m often caught out, “saying” something that other people normally would not. Is that what makes funny, funny? That someone is out on the line? I think about stand up comics and the different routes they take to be funny: They often pull people out of the audience and put them on the spot with personal questions or comments. This makes people laugh, because someone is caught out—is put out on the line, and exposed to public scrutiny. And in that public scrutiny, a single person’s thoughts or actions, bumbles and mistakes, can stand for things that everyone else has thought or done before, but wouldn’t want to admit aloud. Is being funny just a revelation of our humanity?