An envious 'Humorist'

If it is truly possible for someone who is normally colored brown - shading off to black in the sun-burnt parts - to really turn green, then I would disappear from view in the vicinity of any plants. Envy, they say, is one of the seven deadly sins but, I am afraid, that THAT has not caused me to avoid it.

The problem is that I am a man, I am 50 and I still insist on trying to write humor. Why should that be a problem, you ask me? (You did not? It is OK, let us assume you did and proceed) Let me give you chapter and verse of all the problems I face and why I feel envious.

If I were a woman, I could write pieces about the ineptness of men in the kitchen, in the shopping mall and while changing diapers and probably have people - both men and women - rolling in the aisles. (RITA?) I could write about women in any funny manner and still have them rolling on the floor (ROFL!) laughing. The moment I try to write something like "When women change the tires", for example, and write  it with scintillating wit (Alright! That scintillating wit part was hypothetical. Use your damn imagination - even if it is a HUGE stretch) do you think I am going to have people laughing their bellies out? It is more likely that I shall hear the following conversation.

Lady 1: A gender-stereotyping male chauvinistic pig.

Lady 2: I think he deserves to be stoned to death.

Lady 3: The Europeans had a better idea - he should be hung, drawn and quartered.

Lady 4: Be Indian, Try Indian. How about frying him in boiling oil?

And all my male friends would chime in with helpful suggestions about where so much oil could be bought cheap; which would be the best location to conduct the ceremony and whether it would be worth creating a Facebook Page to sell tickets for the event.

Thus, you see, what is sauce for the goose is not always sauce for the gander - probably because ganders are supposed to be inept cooks. That, in effect, means that, if I valued my skin, fifty percent of humanity are OUT as far as attempting any humor is concerned.

I have reason for this fear. A friend of mine was once talking of his wife learning to drive in his Tata Sumo. "A Tata Sumo, an 'L' board and a lady driver. The moment the others spotted all this in their rear-view mirrors, the traffic used to part like Moses parting the waters." He, wise man, said that in an all-male company. I made the mistake of quoting him in mixed company and complicated it further by laughing too. (Note to Self: Never laugh at your own punchlines. It makes you look such an ass - even if true there is no need to advertise it - when nobody else does.) And this ensued.

Lady 1: So, you find the idea of lady drivers that funny?
Me (conciliatorily) : No! It is the attitude of the other drivers it was about.
Lady 2: So, you find that attitude funny? It does not make you angry?
Me : The funny part was that thing about Moses parting the waters.
Lady 3: What's funny about Moses parting the waters?

By the time it ended, I felt much like the Pharaoh's army, which was caught in the middle, when the parted waters rushed to meet again.

So much for the disadvantages of being a man.

Were I young, I would have a whole new set of things to write about wittily. Older relatives always have such interesting idiosyncrasies that are a perennial source of fun for the young. They lose hair, they snore, they belch and they emit such 'wonderfully' different smells from the other end of the alimentary canal.  And they also feel bound to take up invitations since the family feeling is pretty strong in that benighted generation. How wonderful for me if only I were a young humorist.

The problem, though, is I am old too and age, unfortunately, leads you into becoming the perpetrator of some or all of the above. I can, of course, plead that - perhaps unlike the rest of my more accomplished generation - I have not gained such exquisite control over my adenoids and bowels that I can snore or stink to order merely to annoy my hosts. That may - MAY - save me becoming the butt of jokes but is no help in writing humor.

Apparently, even in the involuntary acts, there are some which are still politically correct to make fun of and others which are not. I, poor uninformed moron that I am, considered all of them out of the pale. Now that I have learnt that it is not so, it is too late since all the ones that are allowed for humor are the ones of which I am probably guilty myself. (That 'probably' is only because I have not yet heard myself snore and have to depend on hearsay evidence). As for the ones that I do not do, they are still outside the pale of decent humor.

Maybe, just maybe, I could make fun of how sleeping in a room with the young makes it difficult for me to sleep because of the intimidating silence of their sleeping hours? Maybe I could make fun of how the expense of putting in deodorants in the toilets was rendered useless? I could I suppose and I may also raise a laugh - a horse's laugh. I do like to get my audience laughing but I have an unreasoning antipathy to the horse's laugh. Nitpicking of me, I know, but there you are - one more example of the irrationality of mankind.

With almost every avenue of writing humor closed for me, is it a wonder that I envy the others who are free to pick from a host of subjects to write humorously? I, unfortunately, am left with only one subject to poke fun at - my own self.

Thank God I have so much to be self-deprecatory about!