The risks and rewards of a good wisecrack
Mark K September 4th, 2007
Some friends of mine and I were discussing the movie Borat. Whether laughing or cringing while we watched the movie, we had to have a certain amount of admiration of Sacha Baron Cohen’s willingness to take tremendous risks in his pursuit of finding a good laugh. Posing as a journalist from Kazakhstan named Borat Sagdiyev, Cohen climbs aboard a New York City subway and starts introducing himself to the passengers on board. He insists on trying to kiss each of them on both cheeks, with predictable results. Some people pull away from him and ask him what the hell he’s doing, while others make no bones about what they will do to his face if he touches them. Undaunted, Cohen proceeds to meet and greet throughout the subway car and then across the United States.
I talked about similar “risk/reward” decisions I’ve made while playing the “dictionary game”. In the dictionary game, players take turns choosing a word from the dictionary that most people wouldn’t be familiar with. The “chooser” then writes the correct definition on a piece of paper and folds it up. Each of the other contestants then makes up a definition and writes it on a piece of paper. The “chooser” then reads each definition and the contestants try to guess which one is actually from the dictionary. You get a point if you guess the actual definition and you also get a point for each vote your phony definition receives. So, if you want to win the game, your goal should be to write definitions that are plausible, that sound “dictionary-ish”. But, of course, many of us would rather get a good laugh than win points (or maybe I should say that we consider THAT to be a form of winning points), so we write ridiculous definitions filled with puns, sexual references, inside jokes, and other forms of poor taste!
As I was explaining this, my friend Tucker’s face lit up, he knew exactly what I was talking about and admitted that he had used the same strategy many times. He then told a story about his own risk-reward decision involving humor.
He had just taken a teaching job at a prestigious private high school in Marin County. It was a couple of days before the beginning of the school year and he was attending his first faculty meeting. He hadn’t yet had a chance to meet the vast majority of the faculty, so this was their first exposure to Tucker and an opportunity for him to make a good first impression.
The faculty members had been told that they would each be receiving a brand-new computer that they could use during the school year. At the meeting, the headmaster made the announcement, “Now, what you’ve all been waiting for – you are each going to get your own laptop!”
Tucker, I might add, is one of the kindest and most considerate people and a fantastic teacher. He is also scary-smart, Mensa smart and teaches physics, which he can explain with such clarity that even the most “science-challenged” person can understand. So, I’m sure that Tucker’s brain made lightning-quick calculations, somehow weighing the risk of blurting out what was on the tip of his tongue versus the reward – the coveted full-audience hysteria.
Calculations completed, decision made. And this is what he said:
“Laptop? Oh, for a minute there, I thought you said we were each going to get a Lapdance!”
As they say, you only get one chance to make a first impression. But then again, how many times do you get a chance to deliver a line like that?
After further cogitations Tucker has concluded that such lines would be better saved for a game of Dictionary among equally ill-bred friends.
I can’t wait.
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I’m curious to hear other stories about times you walked the tightrope of risk, hoping for the reward of a good laugh. Were the results heroic, or disastrous? Is there a little voice prodding you to take the chance with an outrageous line?
