I participated in the last of the holiday get-togethers this evening. Talk about holding on. And I was reminded of a great moment in my life. The moment involved my all-time favorite joke.
What’s the joke? Not yet.
The reason the moment was great was because it involved one of my beloved nieces, this one is studying to be a doctor because she’s got it like that, she’s got study cool and textbook savvy and a fancy brain. Better still, she really likes my all-time favorite joke.
Even better than that, she liked when I first told her, wayyyyy back when she was a darling little girl and not at all doctorish.
How do I know she really liked my all-time favorite joke? Because she brought it up tonight, all these years later. And she’s still amused.
Do you know why she likes it? No? Cool, because neither does she.
And you know what? I don’t really know why I love it, either. To quote my beloved niece, “It just struck me as so funny.”
Me too, kid. Um, Doc.
What’s my all-time favorite joke?
It’s the one I tell my classes, announcing on a Monday that I am going to tell it that Friday, and building it up to ridiculous heights each day through the week until there is no way the joke can withstand its own introduction.
And then I tell it, my all-time favorite joke, right at the end of class. I tell it, and leave most of them stunned.
But there is always that one student who laughs. And we connect, and that’s all a joke is supposed to do, make a connection between teller and audience, in an amusing way.
That connection is the whole show, folks. It is why we write or paint or sing or act or sculpt or make films or tell jokes – to connect.
It happened with me and my beloved niece, and with some students through the years, and now, maybe, with me and you.
So, why did the monkey fall out of the tree?
‘Cause he’s dead.

</ Ryan is author of City of Woe, available on Kindle and Nook, and in print. For more info, click here.<