I spent 90 minutes last night laughing my guts out at three of my favourite sitcoms on TV. I have quite a lineup of sitcoms this year and am enjoying the heck out of them. I think about these shows when I’m falling asleep sometimes and chuckle the next day over a particularly funny scene or line or character. I love quality writing and it is great writing that makes these shows funny.
Humour has always served as a lifeline for me and I don’t know what I would do without it. I know some people don’t like sitcoms and I can see why they wouldn’t but I’ve liked them ever since we got our first TV when I was seven years old back in the days of I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners.
Thirty years ago I lost a job that was very important to me and I was crushed. I always made the mistake of aligning my identity too closely to whatever career position I had at the time and so when a job would disappear, my ego would take a beating. I guess I must have shared the fact that I was hurting with my Dad and he gave me some surprising advice. Instead of telling me to buck up or get over it or do something for someone else and forget about my troubles, he told me to go to the local library and check out a bunch of humour books. He recommended collections of short humour pieces by a popular newspaper columnist at the time.
So, I did that and night after night I could be heard, if anyone had been around to hear me, laughing out loud at 4 a.m. in my bed alone in my house. I couldn’t get enough of this humourist and his silly situational stories. I love the way his humour was never mean and how he was always the butt of his own jokes.
Anyway, back to the library I went until I’d read all of the books by that very funny guy and then I moved on to other well-loved humour writers that had preceded him. With a few weeks, I had a new job in my same field with more pay and better working conditions. And I had a new outlet for my writing.
I had written a weekly column for the newspaper I first worked for but the columns were serious and sentimental and sometimes preachy. Now, I tried my hand at humour writing and found I had a bit of a knack for it. And I loved the reaction of people who liked my stories. Over the next 20 years it was nice to be stopped by strangers on the street or in restaurants or, in once case, in a movie theatre, who wanted to tell me how much they enjoyed my columns. A few years ago, a woman whose father had died called me up and offered me the scrapbooks he had kept of my columns. I was touched and, of course, accepted them.
This is not to brag, but to explain that my father, who left school when he was 12 years old after finishing Grade 6, was able to provide some pretty wise counselling to his son who was lost despite the two university degrees and college diploma that hung on his wall. He gave me not only a way to get over a depression brought on by a crisis, but a new outlet for my writing which would put food on my table for many years to come.
Today, I’m sad to say, you will look long and hard for any humour writing in newspapers, though the need for some levity has never been greater. There used to be a lot of humour writers in print though some good ones can still be found on the Internet.
I’m sorry to say I don’t read humour books like I once did. Sitcoms are my medicine now and the medicine is going down very nicely. And now and then, I will explain to an appreciative reader who thinks I am funny, that humour writing may be my talent, but, more importantly, it is the tonic I have to absorb regularly to combat my overly serious nature.
It took an understanding Dad to point me in that direction.
©2011 Jim Hagarty
