JUST TRYNA BE FUNNY

Dear Reader,

I posted an unattractive picture of myself on Instagram today (no filter) because it made me laugh.   

That’s something that’s been on my mind a lot lately. What people find to be funny and how important that can be. 

I’ve never quite been a “class clown” type character, and even in friend groups where I’m the one receiving the most laughs, it’s usually because my sense of humor (and the jokes I tell) is (are) obnoxious. 

And if there was every something I wanted to be so badly it was “the funny one.”

No one can deny how good it feels to make someone laugh. And–even more egotistically–how good it feels to be labeled as funny. But I’ve always been too insecure to actually feel like I’m funny (probably because I’m insecure about everything). 

I’ve been so obsessed with comedians and all different styles of comedy. I read all these hilarious autobiographies and watch clips and TV shows like Last Comic Standing and Whose Line and SNL. I am obsessed with my school’s improv troupe, and I so desperately wish I could be a part of something like that, but I know I’ll probably never put myself out there in such a way. 

Because there are two things I know for sure: 

1. Not everyone can do it. And that’s the sad truth. And I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to think that quickly or keep my face from getting red or manage to not trip over my speech in front of a crowd. I mean how could I–a shaky, red-faced nobody–be able to deliver a punchline?

2. You have to have confidence. Or, at least, you have to fake confidence. 

All of my favorite people and comedians and even YouTubers are the ones who know they’re funny. And that’s at least half the battle. 

There’s a great quote from Bossypants where Tina Fey describes Amy Poehler through an exchange she had with Jimmy Fallon that proved one single point: she did everything she did because she wanted to, and she didn’t care who did (or didn’t) like it.

It’s like the picture I posted tonight. We took way too many, but this one made me laugh, so I posted it. Then I said “what if I just had the caption be #nofilter?” And we laughed some more. And then I saw that one of the locations I could pick was “Fort Meigs: Ohio’s War of 1812 Battlefield.”

So here we all were, rolling around the basement at 11:30, laughing at stupid jokes. And I posted that ugly picture that took us too long to take with the lame caption and slightly incorrect location, not because it’d get a lot of likes on Instagram or because people would think it was funny. 

But because we all thought it was funny. 

I think it’s funny. 

So I’m trying to do more shit like that because life is too short to be worrying about what everybody else is giggling at when you could be making yourself laugh instead. 

Sincerely,

Sammy

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