Lightweight Clownin'

If we could laugh, why can't y'all?

“I can't breathe, I can't breathe…” I squeaked as I slid down an ally entrance wall like a drunk during a controlled collapse as tears filled my eyes.

All around me men and boys were having a similar degree of overreaction. Laughing so hard one man sounded like a dolphin as he fell into another. Yelling, running in circles, literally falling down, jumping onto and into each other. 

We howled like maniacs, laughing so hard our breaths came in gasps as our sides split. One man hyping, “why he do him like that, why he do him like that?!”, as he shadow boxed some invisible opponent. Yelling and roaring as we turned that corner into an insane asylum.

I can't even remember what the burn had been. Which makes sense I suppose given we laughed that hard all the time. Why would I remember an individual joke? On the streets and in the joint we took humor to absolutely cartoonish extremes. We laughed like this all the time.

I haven't seen that since I got out and that's sad.

I remember when everything was an opportunity to make a joke, to roast the next guy, or even to make a fool of yourself. In movies, TV and wherever it comes up, the bottom rung of society is always depicted in a very serious, tough way. 

I think that's one of the ways you can tell if the writer is someone on the outside looking in. You write us as you think we must be. You think because things are difficult, because of the violence and stress and poverty, we must be angry people. We're not. Don't get me wrong, we'd put on our game faces for game times, but everything else was straight recreation.

In prison, there were a group of us who worked out every day for combat training. We were religious in the way we approached this. One day, I was holding my guy Nelson's feet while he did his set of sit-ups. 

Then, in a flash of movement, Feral came up behind him and threw his arms up into a Full-Nelson headlock. (The irony isn't lost on me). At that exact same moment I locked into his legs like a bear trap. He was helpless.

That's when Kendall came sauntering over with his hair all done up, Kool-aid makeup on, booty shorts and a crop top. He was everything you'd imagine a proud prison sissy would be. You see, it was Nelson's birthday and we had put together a little surprise for him. 

Nelson hated the punks, I mean HATED them, so it only made sense we'd have one come sing him happy birthday Marilyn Monroe style. He fought us as if a glowing fireplace poker were approaching his face and we held him in place while Kendall did his best to make this song as inappropriate and uncomfortable for Nelson as possible. Every guy in the gym started joining in on the birthday song sing-along.

We had paid for the song and for Kendall to do it as sluty as humanly possible to make Nelson miserable, what we hadn't expected was for this punk to spin around with his hands on his knees and clap his butt cheeks in perfect rhythm to the final chorus and then percolate like his ass were a paint can mixer right in Nelson's face. Causing Nelson to involuntarily and literally groan and growl like a sad and wounded bear.

I may have peed myself a little in that moment. 

We let him go, Feral and I, and ran for our lives as the entire gym fell over themselves crying and laughing. It echoed so much you couldn't even make out individual sounds. I was snotting myself from howling at the sound he'd made when he caught me. I couldn't do anything but protect my face and frankly the beating had been well worth it.

People out here in the “not lower class” take themselves too seriously. You take yourself too seriously. Everyone is so worried about being embarrassed or looking foolish or keeping up appearances. It's actually depressing. No wonder so many of you are pilled up, you're not allowed to be silly.

The better off financially a neighborhood is, the quieter and more reserved it becomes. You withdraw from your neighbors into your own houses and hope a sitcom will fill that void. You chuckle and smirk at your phones and think “that was funny” and that is sad.

People type “lol” and literally have no idea what that's like.

I'll yell to my wife, “MOMMA, DO WE NEED TOILET PAPER!” In a crowded Kroger, “I DON'T WANT TO USE A WET RAG MOMMA, DO WE NEED TOILET PAPER!!!”. She tells me to shut up while pretending to be mad and I'm laughing while eating some grapes I picked up wandering and everyone else is just, well, you know how y'all can be. Lots of sideways glances and even more uncomfortable “I'm not looking” head turns.

It doesn't matter, be silly. Be embarrassing. What's the actual harm you're avoiding in being cool and collected? So you make a few nerds uncomfortable, that's a them-problem. You're not hurting anyone being a goof. But, let's be honest, you're not being that way for others, it's that weird embarrassment fear as if it somehow matters what strangers think. 

Of course, humor was sometimes not-harmless as well. But that's more of a guy thing. I don't care what any of you say, ball tagging a guy is funny. Hell, some of us were arguing once and one of the fellas snatched up a random dude walking by and threw him like a duffle bag into the group. He exclaimed, “Ope!” as he went airborne. It was so absurd we all just fell out laughing. Even the guy who'd been thrown. 

Who doesn't want to laugh or have fun? Why is it the less you have to be angry or sad about, or the less you have to be afraid of, the less you're inclined towards humor? We laughed when my boys pulled a Pig-pick out of my gut where I'd been stabbed. A whole carload of us laughed our asses off while dumping one of our dudes in front of an emergency room after he'd been shot. Including him. He joked that he'd miss us and someone responded, “bitch, ain't nobody miss you”, referring to the bullet hole in him.

Don't worry, we went back to get him after surgery saved his life,  but that caper is a whole other story. 

The point is that we were always having fun even when people would think we shouldn't be. On paper, we should've been absolutely miserable. But try and tell that to us when we were standing around roasting each other. There's people in the group who literally haven't eaten for days, but it is what it is and we're going to have fun in spite of it.

Crack jokes, quit taking yourself so seriously, be willing to be the butt of the joke in order to pull off the punchline. No one ever said, “he was so cool” during a eulogy but if you made people laugh, that is absolutely getting brought up. 

“We gather here today to celebrate the life of Frank, he was a stoic mf, wasn't he? No one could be boring quite like Frank….” Come on, let's be serious about not being serious.

If you can make it funny then it can't be that bad.