Is This On?

I recently watched the 2003 documentary film When Standup Stood Out, about the Boston standup comedy scene from 1977-1985. I’ve always loved jokes, and can remember hundreds of them on demand, of all varieties. In my student days, to let off steam I would visit a pair of buddies in a neighbouring university, and we would share routines from Richard Pryor to Spike Jones all weekend, non-stop. We would re-create classic skits from Monty Python to Woody Allen to Groucho Marx, and I would return to my studies with sore ribs and shoulders from laughing. I once even considered standup as a career (this I never shared with my parents), but decided I didn’t want to have to be funny on cue, and didn’t want every moment of my life to be material for gags.

I never believed Freud when he reduced laughter to “social nervousness” – deep down I knew it was a good thing, a reaction to the intrinsic absurdity and surprise of life, but also something that unites people and makes them happy. But why do people go to comedy clubs, and what do they expect from comedians? Doubtless there are many reasons, but one of the chief ones in my estimation is that we go to hear the truth, as comedians are one of the few groups in today’s society that are allowed to tell the truth, a role that poets and musicians have bartered away. Certainly we don’t hear it from our parents and teachers, politicians, philosophers, scientists, and doctors, either because they don’t know or won’t tell.

I’m with Steve Smith of The Red Green Show fame, who expressed that making people laugh was a “special state of grace”, even more with the Prophet Muhammad when He says in the Qur’an, “The Gates of Heaven are open wide to him who can make his companions laugh,” and even with Bahá’u’lláh, who as a Manifestation of God, had a scathing wit. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá asserted that his home was a place of “mirth and laughter.” Many books have been written the last few decades on the therapeutic benefits of laughter. Therefore I submit to Bahá’ís that we need to laugh more, let out hair down and be irreverent – within limits, though comedians chafe at having limits – and to value humour as an aspect of the soul and culture as the Jews and the Irish, for instance, have done.

There are at present only a handful of bona fide Bahá’í jokes that make the rounds, and two or three well-known Bahá’í comedians. There are, of course, a multitude of anecdotes and amusing stories, but not many actual jokes. So here follows my own submission of jokes in the well-worn Jeff Foxworthy tradition of “Redneck” jokes:

If you've been divorced three times and still need your mommy and daddy's permission to get married, you might be a Bahá'í.

If a movie star offers you a night of passion and your response is "Um . . . can I investigate your character?" you might be a Bahá'í.

If you get more excited by LSA than LSD, you might be a Bahá'í.

If the only smoke you envision when you hear the phrase "joint feast" is from overdone tadiq, you might be a Bahá'í.

If you think March Madness is the result of extreme hunger, you might be a Bahá'í.

If you see "Some Assembly Required" written on a box and you think it came from a place that needs homefront pioneering, you might be a Bahá'í.

If you see a real estate billboard that says "Fully Detached Community" and you drive on saying "We're not needed here", you might be a Bahá'í.

If your stomach growls on the Ides of March and you answer the pager on your belt, you might be a Bahá'í.

If your idea of the perfect family vacation is to wait for ten years, climb a mountain on foot where there are no casinos, no golf or tennis, you have stay quiet, stand in line, cannot take pictures, you visit a lot of gravesites, and at the end of ten days they kick you out of the country, you might be a Bahá'í.

And you are definitely NOT a Bahá’í if

You think “Paris Talks” was first published in People Magazine.

You think the “Hidden Words” are the lyrics to “Louie, Louie.”

You think the Hands of the Cause aided and abetted a felony.

You think the Tablet of Carmel is chewy.