Why Am I Laughing?

When I'm walking on a flat surface and trip on nothing, I always look back at "the thing that tripped me", because that never happens without an audience.

Watching someone trip or get hit in sensitive areas is funny. I don't know why, but it is unless the person really gets hurt. I took a nasty fall last year and turfed it hard in the street. I had a seizure, which caused it. Many of my neighbors were outside and witnessed it, but none of them laughed. They knew I was hurt.

Let's face it, "America's Funniest Home Videos" would never have stayed on the air without those mishaps that make us laugh.

Once, while on the mall second floor of a mall, I watched a little girl, about 8 years old, leading a blind woman by the hand. Bad idea in a mall. Of course the girl got distracted, and the poor woman went for an unexpected swim in the center court fountain. It was funny. I hate to admit it, but it was. People immediately came to her rescue, which is what I would have done, had I been down stairs.

Maybe it's partly the vantage point. My younger brother and I played a lot of baseball together. We played one game called "fly balls" where one of us would play an outfielder and the other would throw a fly ball as close to the fence as possible. Why? Because it was a barbed wire fence. I was the outfielder, and I must say that I made a spectacular catch, robbing our imaginary batter of a sure home run.

The problem was, I didn't come back to the ground. There was a barb securely attached inside me leg. So as I'm hanging on the fence, yelling at my brother to get my Mother, he couldn't because he was laughing so hard.

As a comedian, there's no worse feeling than bombing. Also as a comedian, there's nothing more funny than watching one of your friends "eat it" on stage. The only ones laughing in the club are the other comedians hanging out in the back of the showroom. Its funny.

As human beings, I don't understand why we laugh at certain things. We laughed at scenes from "Pulp Fiction" and "Fargo" that we shouldn't have, but we did.

Today, I laugh at all of the adults who were so convinced the world would was going to end this time last year. Knuckleheads.

See you tomorrow.