Life In The Laugh Lane
By Scott Jones
Making Fun
I have only been arrested once… for joking at an airport. In its infancy in 1973, the airline security in Wisconsin consisted of one blue-haired lady sitting behind a folding table. “What’s in your backpack?” “Two books and a scarf,” I said. “Be careful, the scarf might explode.”
Official charge: bomb threat, felony, $1,000 bail, reduced to disorderly conduct, $25 fine. No signs were posted that read, “No joking in the airport, you dipstick.”
While I spoke with delighted students after finishing a graduation concert at a Colorado high school, an angry man stomped up to the stage, wagged his finger at me, and shouted, “Filthy obscene language! I’ll see to it you NEVER perform in Arvada again!” And then he stormed away. I asked the counsellor who’d hired me if he knew the man. “Yeah,” he said, “That’s the principal of the school.”
“Why is he so bent outta shape? It was a clean show.”
“You mentioned that many things ‘suck.’ He doesn’t like that word and thinks it constitutes swearing.
‘Alas, no signs warned me that the principal sucked.
When I was eight, my mother overheard me yell the fun S-word a friend had taught me. She washed out my mouth with soap. If I’d said the F-word, she’d probably have used a flame-thrower. She didn’t even want me to play an F-chord on the piano. Later in life while performing, if I knew Mom was in the audience, I’d never speak the F-word. I was afraid she’d charge the stage with a spray bottle of Lysol and a mop for my mouth, and clean up my act on the spot.
The jokes are the same. “Did ya hear that Norwegians were throwin’ sticks o’ dynamite ’cross the border inta Sweden?” The Swedes lit ’em and threw ’em back! (Now switch the countries and tell it at the next campsite.) I mentioned this to my editor, but to appreciate it, he’d have to experience the companionship of Ole and Sven.
For decades I performed on stages; these days I perform on pages. It’s safer at home, but I can’t feel, see, or hear the reaction of these tiny audiences of one reader stretched across the globe. Normally I don’t intend to offend anyone, well, maybe Agent Orange. And I apologize in advance regarding “INDIA: a hip story” which may well annoy 18% of the world’s population in one chapter. Comedy is a perilous profession, and today, humor is not a laughing matter.
If you choose, feel free to have a ceremonial book-burning of Can you spare me a smile? and then upload the video on the web. Or if you come across a unique sign that commemorates the misprints, misspellings, and misjudgments that make us all human, please send me a photo.
I’m sure you “do not know the next time though,” but when you finally do, I’ll “kindly note and implementation” the fun. Thanks.
*****
Scott Jones has written hundreds of articles and columns for many newspapers and magazines in the USA and Thailand, authored five books (Flesh and Blood and DNA, an action/adventure novel exploring genetic engineering and its sequel, TURNABOUT: Flesh and Blood and DNA Finale; Life in the Laugh Lane: facts, fiction, and photos in Asia, and its sequel, Can you spare me a smile?, and Five Lives One Dream, a metafiction novel of action, love, and adventure which spans the spectrum from severely humorous to deadly serious.
Over the years, he has performed his unique style of original music, comedy, and stand-up photography in Asia, Canada, and all fifty states in America. He currently edits and designs other authors’ books while living in Thailand with his wife and two huskies, Sirius and Aurora, the Exalted Rulers of Their General Vicinity.
Scott was born in Fargo, North Dakota, but he takes pills for it.
Life in the Laugh Lane at www.lifeinthelaughlane.com, web www.kingcobrapress.com and Amazon.com
For more information about Lake Chapala visit: www.chapala.com
