Humor takes many forms and I am interested in them all. I have heard that one theory is that we laugh when we get a mental surprise, when two roads in our head suddenly meet unexpectedly. My great grandson told me a joke yesterday. "Where are the Great Plains?" "At the great airports!" Huh? Oh, I see. He changed from 'plains' to 'planes' without telling me. Ha!
I bet there are many books and papers about what is funny and why but I haven't read them. I see that many things that make me laugh are indeed a similar surprise, a switch from one word or meaning to another. But only if they are fairly benign. I get to be the immediate judge of whether they are fairly kindly or not. In a Cheers re-run, Sam said of a tough guy that "He isn't the sort of guy who drinks tea with his pinky up in the air." Immediately, Coach said, "Sam! Please! There are ladies present!" I find that very funny. It happened more than a day and a half ago and I am still chuckling.
But pictures of human pain or failings often leave me horrified, or at least, unsmiling and unmoved. Some homemade videos on tv specialize in people falling off bicycles, crashing into the family dog or a fence. There is even a laugh track supplied to encourage me to join in with a laugh. I find that predictable, trite and painful. Not funny at all.
For me, much of the best humor is conceptual, not semantic. I love the movie "The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!" It explores the adventures of a Russian submarine that gets stuck on a sandbar off the coast of New England, too close to the US and its dangerous military forces for comfort. What is it doing there? Trying to get the sub close enough to the shore so the captain can see America. Why? Because he's never seen it!
I think humans are full of poignant, unpredictable curiosities and ideas that create all sorts of amazing coincidences, pairings and situations that memorably funny. A single married couple going about their day, such as us, find many ideas and activities in the news, the neighborhood and ourselves ironic and laughable. Humor can brighten our minds, our lives and our marriages and that is too important to snicker about!
