Life is a comedy

And vice versa.

When I was very little, I almost always got teased for having "rabbit ears." My ears face forward, instead of lying neatly flat against the side of my head, like most people. The joke I remembered the most was being compared to a taxi cab. My friends teased me--and they were supposed to be my friends--that I looked like a taxi cab with the doors open. It hurt a little bit (the jokes I mean, not my ears) but I figured there's not much I could do about it, so just live with it. To fight back, I used self-deprecating humor. If I couldn't lick them, I'd join them. I also remembered one day before I went to grade school, when I took the small wooden shoes I had, hung them on my ears, and showed it to my mother. She really got a big laugh out of it. And so did I.

That must have been the beginning of my comedic tendencies. I started making other people laugh at my stories, gestures and antics. I listened to jokes and tried to tell them my way. I learned how to wait for the right moment to deliver the punch lines, and back it up with gestures or facial expressions or lack of it. In my own little world, I was the house comedian.

I like all kinds of jokes. I like puns, too. Actually, I can be categorized as having a sort of dry humor. I see funny jokes that other people may not. I see humor in everyday happenings or simply what people say. Most of the time, my jokes consist of telling what is obvious. Like saying the prices of goods are lower when they are on sale. Or you can eat all you want at a buffet restaurant. Or the traffic is only bad when there are lots of cars and drivers on the freeways. You know, things like that.

I was thinking about this the other morning, when I asked my "first wife" what made her decide to marry me. I knew I was maybe cute but not good looking, and I didn't have a hunk of a body. "Was it my sense of humor?" I inquired.

She replied, with a straight face, "I thought you had lots of money. It turned out I had more money than you."

And all this time, I thought I was the only comedian in the house.