thatgirlisfunny.com

More Adventures in Living a Healthy, Juicy Life

By Josh Hanagarne, World’s Strongest Librarian

Introducing Josh Hanagarne, the World’s Strongest Librarian, as ThatGirlIsFunny’s first guest contributor!   Girls, this is boy humor, but hang in to the end, Josh is an absolute delight.  He called me his “darlingest daffodil” (giggle, giggle, blink, blink).  He’s quite charming, really, except for the occasional eye strike – Cheryl Ragsdale

The problem with being funny is that everyone has a different idea of what “funny” is.  Some people think Bugs Bunny is hilarious.  Some think he’s a sociopath.  Spend five minutes scanning TV stations and try to make sense of it all.  You might decide, as I have, that humor is impossible to define.  There are so many contradictory things billed as “comedy” that my mind reels.

I believe that if you know what makes a person laugh, you know a lot about that person.

Consider This Brief Story

I have extreme Tourette’s Syndrome.  If you need an explanation of what Tourette’s is, you can check out this series I wrote a few months ago.  For this story, it’s enough for you to know that Tourette’s makes me do things.  I move and make noises involuntarily.

I was at a horror movie—The Descent—with my sister.  After about ten minutes, my thumb started twitching.  I couldn’t stop it.  It twitched harder.  About 40 minutes after that, it started buzzing like it had fallen asleep.

And then I couldn’t feel it at all.  I didn’t want to know what had happened so I focused on the movie.  Sadly, the final ten minutes weren’t that great and I resumed wondering just how mangled my hand was.

Afterwards, we went out into the hall.  I held my hand up to take a look.

My sister screamed at the top of her lungs.

It was the most genuine shriek I’d heard all night.

My thumb dangled below my wrist, flopping like a fish, as dislocated as a thumb can get. An hour later, I was in the emergency room with my wife.  She was a bit annoyed by how much the nurses were enjoying my story.  She said she married me because I was funny, and yet she doesn’t like it when I make nurses giggle.

Or maybe she was just irritated that she was in the ER at one in the morning.

They fitted me with a cast and sent me on my way.  My arm was wrapped up from the elbow to the thumbnail.  I couldn’t move the thumb a millimeter.

The Next Day At Work

I’m a friendly guy.  I work with hundreds of people every day at the library. Every single person who walked in the door wanted me to tell the entire story when they saw my cast.

It was a good story, but by noon I felt like I had told it a billion times.  And it’s not like I got to just tell the story.  I usually had to start with “Here’s what Tourette’s is, here’s how long I’ve had it…”

So when the pale, impatient-looking woman with the strange sweater slammed her pile of books down and demanded that I help her, I was glad that she, at least, was in too much of a hurry to ask questions.

We were almost done when she said, “What happened to you, anyway?”

I held my thumb up to her face and said, “I snagged this on someone’s eye socket when I was pulling it back out of their brain.”

She pursed her lips, turned paler than I would have thought possible, and walked out without saying a word. She didn’t even take her books, which I considered a victory in my battle against Danielle Steel.

The Moral

1. Humor is a moving target that won’t ever sit still.  This won’t change.
2. As long as most people think you’re funny, you’re probably funny. Ignore lame-os who can’t see the humor in receiving an eye-gouging thumb strike from a mild-mannered librarian.
3. Don’t read Danielle Steel.

Josh Hanagarne

Get Stronger, Get Smarter, Live Better…Every Day

About the Author:   Josh Hanagarne is the twitchy giant behind World’s Strongest Librarian, a blog about living with Tourette’s Syndrome, book recommendations, kettlebells,  buying pants when you’re 6’8”, old-time strongman training, and much more. Please subscribe to Josh’s RSS Updates to stay in touch.

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