Colin Devine, Humor Guru


Surveys show that the number one fear of Americans is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. That means that, at a funeral, the average American would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy.  I wish I had come up with this myself, for if I had, many Americans would have grown up watching Devine instead of Seinfeld.

As I embark on my perilous journey as humor guru, I think it wise to briefly discuss my destination.  I want to discover what humor is and how to elicit it.  In one of the most surprising etymologies to date, the word humor comes from the Latin humere meaning moisture.  Ironic that one of the greatest things in the world would share such a connection with one of the worst words in the English language—I’ve never met someone who loves the word moist.

It seems like the hardest part of writing something funny involves safely navigating between the Charybdis of vulgarity and the Scylla of boredom.  I’m not sure which is more deadly for the aspiring comic.  Actually I am; I’ll do my best not to be boring.  Water is life, humor is moist, so perhaps when we laugh we are the most alive.  The great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote, “One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man’s laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.” Laughter functions as the most natural check of pride, perhaps the most deadly of the deadly sins.

The best humor writers are like baseball players: we only succeed 1/3 of the time.  I envy professional baseball players because it is much easier to nurse a bruised arm than a bruised ego. Even though the risks are so great, the vast majority of us still make an attempt to be funny. Humor is an immediate connector; for many of us I bet our best friends are those who make us laugh the most.  Sharing a joke presupposes grasping the same truth.  Babies are born laughing and are the best comedians – the funny thing about trying to be funny is that we get worse at it as we age. Humor is simultaneously one of the most natural and the most foreign things to us.  What makes one dancing cat hilarious to watch for 3 minutes and one agonizingly boring?  Why are people so funny when they have gotten their wisdom teeth out, but not at all funny while brushing their teeth?  Hyenas cackle, crows crow, geese honk, but only we can laugh.

For something that is so familiar to all of us, humor is nearly impossible to describe.  My roommate (himself a brilliant humorist) recently shared with me a cartoon featuring two anteaters in the park.  They brought a big cake, sliced it, put their pieces of cake on the ground, and just stared at them.  The caption reads simply, “Now we wait.”  Why is this funny? I knew before that anteaters eat ants, and that ants like cake.  It was not any new information that made me laugh, but the reordering of previous information.  We know that when people are coming out of a surgery they will be loopy and say silly things, yet we still laugh when they do.  My AP Psych teacher told us that laughter is surprise (the same teacher told us that he is terrified of Reese Witherspoon because he feels like she is judging him.)  I do think that we often laugh when we are surprised, but I don’t think that by any means encapsulates what humor is.  Perhaps laughter is our best way to say thank you to God for the gift of life.  The famous adage by Hilaire Belloc runs, “Wherever the Catholic sun does shine, there’s always laughter and good red wine.”  While it is difficult for me to legally provide the latter of these to you, my dear readers, I will do all that I can to generously share the former.

Colin Devine is a Sophomore studying PLS and Finance.  He recently had the opportunity to win a game of Scrabble with the word “moist,” but refused on principle.