My grandson, Ethan, stood quietly gazing up at a brass plaque on the wall outside the sanctuary of our church. Engraved in the plaque was a long list of names. At three years old, he couldn’t read the names, but he studied the impressive plaque for some time following the church service. Eventually, the Pastor walked over and stood next to Ethan, prompting Ethan to point at the plaque and ask, “What is that?”

“Well,” said the Pastor solemnly, “those are the names of people from our community who died in the service.”

“Oh,” said Ethan, then he turned to the Pastor and asked, “Was it the 9:00 service or the 10:30 service?”

So there you have it; the Pastor got a surprise and we all got a chuckle. And that my friends, is the essence of humor; and that is just about all the explanation it can tolerate. Once you begin to probe the depths it quickly becomes … oh … not so funny.

Humor is to be enjoyed more than studied. But, I do have a couple of observations about humor in our neck of the woods. First off, as a “Maine Humorist” I am grateful to have been born here. I mean, whoever heard of a New Jersey humorist, or a Nevada humorist, or even an Oklahoma humorist? Even though one of the truly great humorists was born and raised in Oklahoma, Will Rogers! No siree bub! None of those other states can tie their name to humor the way we can here in the northeast corner of this great land.

One possibility is our taciturn nature, which is in direct opposition to the concept that Maine is somehow a hot bed of humor.

Like the time that Mark Twain spoke to a vestry hall full of Maine farmers and their wives. By the time he finished he hadn’t heard as much as a giggle from the crowd; and he normally had them rolling in the isles in other places in the U.S. and around the globe. So, he snuck around to the side door to hear what the crowd thought of him as they filed out of the hall. The first couple out, a farmer and his wife, stopped while the farmer packed his pipe. His wife remarked in a reserved voice, “Wasn’t that fella funny, Pa?”

“Ayuh,” responds the farmer, “he was so funny I had everything I could do to keep from laughing!”

And as Marshall Dodge was so fond of saying … “Now that’s something to ponder.”

So, while Maine is definitely the home of understated humor, I’m still not clear about why it is the only state that exports “Maine Humorists.” Why does the great state of Maine have a national reputation for drawing laughter out of the simplest of things? A child in church, a notable lack of laughter when a very funny man is talking, or most recently, Merton Hickey taking a quiet walk across one of his fields to enjoy a lovely spring morning in West Gardiner, Maine.

As Mert made his way across the field he came upon a ‘sink-hole’, which is a natural phenomenon here in Maine where the ground gives way and a hole, sometimes a very deep hole, appears. Well, Mert leaned over the hole and tried to see how deep it was, but it was so deep he couldn’t see the bottom.

So, he looked around for something to drop down the hole so he could listen to it hit the bottom; then he would have an idea how deep (and potentially dangerous) the darn thing was. An old Model A transmission was laying there in the grass, not far from the hole. So, he pushed it into the hole and listened for it to strike bottom. But just then a goat jumped into that same hole. And almost immediately his friend Jimmy Fuller walked up on him from behind and asked Mert, “Hey, Mert, have you seen my goat?”

“Yup,” says Mert, “it just jumped down this hole.”

“He couldn’t have,” says Jimmy. “I had him tied to an old transmission right over here in your field.”

So, is that why Maine humorists thrive here in our great state? Is it because more “stuff” happens here than anywhere else on the planet? Or, is it because we are more “surprised” by these seemingly “simple” every day events than folks in other parts of the country?

Nope, I think stuff happens everywhere, all the time. And since there are more people in some other parts of the country, I’m pretty sure even more stuff happens. I honestly believe that the reason we comfortably throw around the term “Maine Humorist” (like we invented the concept of laughter) is because we still take the time to watch and listen to our neighbors and smile (or laugh out loud) when they do something unexpected.

Like I have said, for many years in response to the question, “How do you become a Maine humorist?” … You just watch your neighbor for 20 minutes and go tell someone what he did!

And then you both take a few minutes to enjoy the laughter your story produces. It’s as much about the time you take to enjoy the laugh as it is the story that produced the laugh. Give yourself a gift today. Take the time to laugh. It’s worth your time … Ayuh!

This article, ‘Laughter, A Surprise to Everyone’ is an excerpt from Designer Health Today, June 2011

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