Telling jokes
It’s strange. I make my living by “being funny” (for the sake of argument, let’s put aside the fact that there are plenty of people disagreeing with this premise), but I can’t tell jokes to save my life. I’m pretty good at situational witty remarks, but I fail at “normal” jokes. It starts with the problem that I can barely remember any. I hear a joke, laugh about it, but a few minutes later, I couldn’t retell it. In the rare case that I do remember one and tell it to an audience, I more often than not bungle the delivery. I forget relevant parts that are essential for the punchline to work. I get nervous with everybody looking at me and start to hurry up, thus skipping or mumbling words.
I have a theory that that’s one of the reasons why I draw comics. Because when writing and drawing a comic strip, I’m alone in my room. I have time to think about the best structure and delivery and try it out a hundred times in my mind. I guess that’s the difference between visual vs. performing arts. Lucky for everybody involved that I became a comic artist and not a standup comedian!
Stef
I used to fly out of a smaller airport with a remote traffic advisory. When there wasn’t much traffic and things were slow, I would try to incorporate little jokes into my radio calls, usually making puns around the names of the reporting points. My pride and joy was when one of the controllers clued in to one of my puns as she was responding and cracked up laughing half-way through her call.