Twelve Minutes, Thirty Seconds

I miss being in funny environments – and having jobs where people are funny. I’m talking about really funny, and not the kind of bullshit funny you’ll find in offices, where you can’t say anything really funny because you have to watch every little thing you say. I’m still not used to that. Sometimes I say things, and people stare at me like they can’t believe I just said what I said. When people do this, they lose me. If this reaction is real, and what I’ve said is shocking to you, you’re not my kind of guy. If it’s fake, you’re an asshole. I used to think I was the problem. I don’t anymore. I’m really not that off-color. Compared to where I've been? Fuck. Come on.

Where I work, a lot of people think they’re funny. Some are, but most aren’t. This is hard for someone like me, having been around some sincerely funny people throughout my life. Until the past few years, I’ve never had to cluster around some guy’s cubicle to watch people do funny shit on YouTube, because I had funny shit, perpetuated by funny people, happening all around me. I’ve never had to live vicariously through someone else’s jokes. That so many people have to do this makes me very sad. It accounts for the success of movies like The Hangover, which are targeted at guys who’ve never seen anything funny before. I’ve been to multiple bachelor parties where funnier shit happened. I watched that movie – I haven’t seen the second one – with the same look on my face that I get when someone who’s not funny in my office tells me a story about a paper jam.

People in my office are about as funny as bone cancer.

I can’t do charity laughs, either. Humor isn’t Little League. Not everyone gets to crack a funny joke. If you suck, you suck, and if I sit there watching you clinically without breaking into hysterics, it’s your fault, not mine. This happens every day at work. People try, and fail, and then get offended when 1) I don’t laugh at their lame-ass attempts at humor, and 2) I fire back with something that actually makes people laugh, violating their sense of office decorum and fairness.

This probably makes me sound like an asshole, but I don’t care. These are not my people.