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Oh, You Got Jokes?
Traveling to Africa for ten days with a group of six is a good way to get sick of people get to know people really well.
It’s also a good opportunity to spend some time alone in your brain and maybe learn some things. For example, I now think I’m just not that into “jokes”. I love the well-told story with some funny mixed in, but please, no weirdness for the sake of weirdness that becomes funny because it’s so weird. (I’m looking at you, Family Guy.)
I just don’t laugh at jokes that are really only funny as meta-jokes. Something I laughed at once doesn’t have to be repeated ad infinitum just because we’re tired. IF WE’RE TIRED, LET’S SHUT UP. (Oops, my introversion is showing.)
Before we boarded our minibus to JFK, I was carrying a heavy tube packed full with antennae and other long wifi equipment, and I said something about it being heavy and weirdly shaped. And that’s when it started: “That’s what she said.”
Okay, Ha! Ha ha ha ha ha.
The end. Right?
Not right. It was going to be a long night.
“That’s what she said.”
Uuuugh.
By the time we were in Rwanda, “That’s what he said” was in the mix. And it was funny. I laughed… for the first few days. But then it stopped being fun to be in on this joke.
The genders were divided evenly on this trip, three men, three women. And while the other two ladies joined my eye rolling, the boys couldn’t get enough of this. It wasn’t until the Brussels airport on the way back when they started trying, although not in earnest, to cease fire.
And just to make things clear, it’s not the nature of the joke that bothers me — I used to adore the She Said from Michael Scott, but now I’ve heard it so many times it may as well be She Sells Seashells.
My aversion to these jokes is the repetition. And especially when I’m tired, I don’t want one more thing to be tired of.
But maybe the experience in Africa was less about boys enjoying the same exhausted joke, and maybe more about the entire group trying to create something familiar for our very strange week. Much like the aunt who grasps your elbow so she can bend your ear at Thanksgiving – even though we didn’t really like it, it was something to hold onto.