Funny on Purpose

     When you first join a Toastmaster's club, you get a Competent Communicator manual. It contains the first  ten speech projects. These projects all deal with parts of a speech, organization, movement, language, props and so forth. Once you have finished this manual, you are considered a "Competent Communicator".
   Once you have the CC designation, you can go on to advanced manuals that deal with different types of speaking. There are technical presentations, speaking for TV or radio and many others.
   Once I was awarded my CC, I picked out two manuals so I could get to the next level. One of them was about storytelling. I enjoyed it and finished all five projects in the manual. I wasn't sure what to do next. I didn't really feel like doing the entertaining speech manual. I looked at technical speeches, too much work. Nothing looked good to me.
  I went back and reviewed some of the projects in the first manual. There was a long time where I just didn't give any speeches at all.
  Then I decided that I would tackle the humorous speech manual. The projects seemed easy and the speeches wouldn't have to be long ones. No problem. Piece of cake. Right?
  Wrong.
   What I didn't realise is that when you give a humorous speech, you have to be funny. You have to be deliberately funny. You have to intentionally go out there for laughs.
  I wasn't sure I could do this. I have been accused of having no sense of humour. When I was in college, I was banned by my friends from telling jokes as I didn't do it well.
  It's not that I have never said anything funny. The problem is that the times where I can get people to laugh are the times when I'm not trying to. I'll say something and whoever I'm with starts laughing. I cherish those times as they don't happen often.
  One of the things that the manual recommends is to keep a humour file. The manual advises you to seek out sources for humour, books,magazines, the Internet and keep a file of funny stories, quips and jokes. The challenge for me is that I don't find most of todays comedians funny. My favourite comedians are Jack Benny, George Carlin, George Burns and Bob Newhart. A good hunk of what makes them funny is not just what they say, but what they are doing when they say it. Another challenge for me is that I have a really dry sense of humour. Think Mojave desert dry. My Dad is also like this and he and I are sometimes amused by things that other people just don't get. For instance, there's a T-shirt that I like that says "Resistance isn't futile. It's voltage divided by current." The only people who find this funny are people who watch Star Trek and know a little something about electricity. At a church picnic, a couple were wearing shirts that said, "What part of (there was a long complicated mathematical formula) don't you understand? I didn't get the formula, but thought the shirt was funny anyway. (I wanted to ask what the formula meant, but was too scared.) There is a phrase in German, "es steht mir Spanisch vor".  It is the equivalent to "It's Greek to me." What it says is, "It's Spanish to me." I think that's funny.
  Are you beginning to see what I mean?
  I decided to do the first project in the manual. I figured that I would shoot for getting people to smile and if some people laughed it would be a bonus. I am pleased to tell you that I got some laughs. It seems that I can be funny on purpose.
  I am looking forward to the next project instead of dreading it. I'm wondering if I can do something with pratfalls......