Not Funny At The Time

Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter — What If? Writing Exercise for Fiction Writers prompts

The Exercise — Write about something that happened to you that didn't seem at all funny at the time, for example, being stuck in a traffic jam and having a bee fly in through the car window or the time your tenant set your stove on fire and the firemen wrenched it from the wall and tossed it into the backyard. Bring the incident under the humor spotlight and transform it so as to emphasize things that will make your reader smile or laugh.Pacing is important, as are crucial details, and your own confidence that the story does not need analysis or authorial nudging. The last thing you want to do is tell the reader that you're about to lay a funny story on him. Limit: 550 words.

The Objective - Because humor resides largely in what attitude you assume toward your material, you must be able to discover and exploit those elements that highlight the comic, the exaggerated, and the unlikely. Keep in mind that you could just as easily take the bee story and make it tragic (bee bites driver, driver crashes into another car, killing infant in back seat).

In recovery and having recently graduated with a degree in applied psychology, I was assigned to work at a men's halfway house on the reservation. My regular group was, of course, all men. One day, I had the bright idea of sharing with the men about impotence.

Some of the men had diabetes, and most drank too much, and so I thought it made sense to talk about how impotence can and does occur with one or both conditions. So I started by saying, when drinking too much, impotence can and does happen to men as young as 30/40 and all ages above that.

Then I went on to say that when people get better control of their diabetes and when they stop drinking in recovery, the impotence can and does go away, not in all cases, but for most. I then added that, in some recovery support groups, they recommend you stay out of a relationship for a year.

And I would say, even two years! I thought it was going pretty well until after my last statement about the two years, one of the guys said, "Fuck you, you stay out of a relationship for two years!"

I then told him that I was married when I got into recovery, and they tell you not to make any big changes in the first year. He then said, "Okay, I'll tell you what... I will leave and go and get married, and then I will be back!"

That made me concerned that all the unmarried guys may want to do the same thing. I thought I won't say that again.

Then I was talking to a counselor friend who had been working as a counselor for some time, and about what just happened in my group, when he said, "There was nothing wrong with what you said, all of it is the truth. What my counselor said when I was in treatment was, there is a Russian saying that is, 'If you drink, you can't fuck!"

We both started laughing. I asked him how that worked for him, and he said, well, I'm still sober, aren't I? And we both laughed.

Then he proceeded to say that he wanted me to do that group with the counselors he was working with, and some other professionals who are working with our people. He said, "I much prefer how you talked about it compared to how my counselor handled it.

Then we laughed again about what happened in the group. What the guy said to me about leaving to get married. He didn't leave the halfway house, and he didn't start drinking to my knowledge.

Then we laughed some more about what his counselor said to him. I said was your counselor Russian and he said, "No, and he probably just made that up."

After that, I was the person who would give that talk to other counselors and professionals in that community until I moved. I continued to do a similar talk for several years after in my other positions. Most people have difficulty talking about sex. I've been married for a total of 52 years now. And for some reason, it has never been a problem for me.