What's So Funny?

My 11th-grade English teacher, Mr. Joseph, was brilliant. That year, we studied American Literature, and he walked us through the gamut of novelists, storytellers and poets from the Colonial era through the early 1960s. Yes, of course we started with The Scarlet Letter, but we headed into spring with Death of a Salesman. Mr. Joseph wasn't just brilliant, he was also quite funny. Looking back, I'm quite sure he had Tourette's Syndrome. He would sometimes pause in the middle of reading a story, form his hand into a gun and yell "Pow-pow-pow!" Or he would be taking attendance and split someone's last name into syllables separated by "Duh-uh-uh!" Always with a completely straight face. He wasn't ridiculing or threatening anyone -- these bizarre lapses didn't seem to be directed at anyone. They happened randomly and then he went right back to what he was doing.

But at the time, it appeared to be just another facet of Mr. Joseph's exceedingly dry sense of humor. He was so sharp, we assumed he was just playing head games with us to keep us on our toes. Regardless of whatever he did, he very clearly loved literature and knew how to teach it.

One day, we studied Herman Melville's short story "Bartleby the Scrivener." In case you were out sick the day your class undoubtedly covered this classic, it's about an office clerk named Bartleby who suddenly starts responding to his boss's requests with "I would prefer not to." The story has been interpreted and analyzed countless times. Stephen King even touched on it in his own great American novel, Bag of Bones.

So there we were on a lazy afternoon, tackling Bartleby. As was his custom, Mr. Joseph called upon as many students as he could to read a few paragraphs out loud. He didn't go row by row. He randomly picked the next person to read, and I didn't want to be caught not paying attention, so I followed along carefully. I wasn't the first person called to read; I was probably the sixth or seventh, and by then, Bartleby had already begun to weird out.

Soon enough, Mr. Joseph called on me to read and I couldn't resist. I was especially happy, and somewhat surprised, that no one else in the class (especially certain boys who were aspiring stand-up comics) had beaten me to it. It seemed so obvious.

In response to him directing me to read, I smiled and said "I would prefer not to."

A few people in the class laughed. I felt pretty good. It was what one would call a "throwaway line." Something incredibly obvious, inoffensive...I figured Mr. Joseph would roll his eyes, say "Ha ha," and then, compliant student that I was, I would simply start reading the passage. You see, I liked Mr. Joseph, and I thought he liked me, which means I thought he "got" me. I felt safe going a little outside the lines in his class. Not every day -- actually, this was the first time I'd had any desire to try it.

But no. Mr. Joseph didn't get it. He stood up, glared at me, and said "Well, perhaps you would prefer to go to detention and get a failing grade for this class?"

I honestly don't remember how I responded, other than to start crying. I was absolutely shocked to my core. How on earth could he have taken such offense to such an obvious line? Especially when he knew I was a good student who never, ever gave him any trouble? Could he not take a joke?

I may or may not have ended up reading the damn passage, but either way, he later came over to my desk and quietly made some lame attempt at an apology. He approached with caution. Not because of my tears but because he had just gotten a completely different impression of me than he'd had before. My sudden fit of silliness seemed to have utterly shocked him. Somehow we smoothed it over; I didn't drop the class (as he, still in defensive-teacher mode, suggested I might want to), and I went on to get the same high marks for the rest of the year that I'd always gotten. I just assumed the guy didn't have a sense of humor or wanted to make an example of me so that others in the class would keep their wisecracks to themselves. This certainly wasn't the first time that a teacher had chewed me out in front of everyone, but it most likely was one of the last. It hurt in a way I had trouble expressing. I didn't tell my parents; probably didn't tell anyone because I had learned that when a teacher blasts you, it's because you're "bad" and you deserved it.

Life went on. Mr. Joseph has gone to that great classroom in the sky. Despite that one very, very bad afternoon, he remained one of my favorite teachers of all time.

This was over 40 years ago and it took most of those years for me to finally understand what it was about.

It was about me being a girl. Girls, women, are assumed by many not to have a sense of humor. Not to wisecrack or mouth off or get folks laughing the way a guy can. We not only don't tell jokes, we are expected to keep a poker face and look down from a superior position at male peers who do. The guys are expected to say silly, clumsy, endearing things to us, which we reject ... up to a point, at which time we realize that they're just hopeless little boys and their teasing means they really like us, and we can't expect any better from them. But at no time are we ever allowed to laugh along, and certainly we are not allowed to be the source of the laughter. Fun and femininity are portrayed as being somehow incompatible. There's a great commercial making the rounds, from Geico insurance, where they compare the ease of getting a quote to nearly anything. A woman baking cookies is asked "What are you waiting for? Tag Team to come and help you with the recipe?" At which point, the famous rap duo performs an irresistible rendition of "Whoomp! There it is!" and soon the woman and her daughter's boyfriend are joyfully dancing along -- but the daughter takes one look at the merriment and disdainfully rolls her eyes and walks out the door. For decades, commercials and sitcoms have always framed women as the humorless ones who are tasked with being the only true grownups in the room.

Any one of my male classmates that day could have shot off the same retort and gotten the response that I was anticipating. It's just another version of "Boys will be boys." Boys will be funny, boys will be irreverent, boys will be disruptive.

I could be (and still am) all of those things. Many female-identified humans are. But the audiences for funny women don't always react the same way that they do for guys. Funny women have to be careful. It's probably easier once they've broken through and started making money for writing or telling jokes. But in the classroom or the workplace, it's still a pretty dicey proposition.

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