Laugh

I've been watching the amazing six-part documentary about Monty Python, and in the final episode, John Cleese said something along the lines of this:

"As you get older you laugh less because you've heard the jokes before."

It's a sad statement, but it's something that has occurred to me in my life. As a child, my father was had amazing taste in comedy, and I grew up watching things like SCTV, The Kids in the Hall, Night Court, and Monty Python's Flying Circus. I think I was exposed to a good deal of excellent comedy early on, and refined it throughout my teenage years, appreciating the old stuff while expanding my horizons considerably with the advent of the internet (as it is now I have dozens of classic and current comedy sitcoms and films watched and archived on my computer, with even more waiting in the wings). This sense of humor certainly helped me through my middle and high school years, but as I began college I noticed that I didn't laugh as much as I used to in response to jokes told in everyday conversation or on a digital screen somewhere. It was more of a smile, or - at most - a singular "ha" ("huh" or "hmm" is a more onomatopoetic translation), even in instances where everyone else is in guffaws.

I do find, however, that I'm more likely to laugh at the things that shouldn't be funny, or the more intricate jokes. Something that comes to mind happened a few months ago, when we had an older instructor who told these old, hokey jokes - the groaners - and the entire class would not laugh, not even in a patronizing way. In those instances, I found the fact that everyone thought these jokes suck to be extremely funny. It's similar to what Norm MacDonald is doing for his act nowadays, immortalized in his roast of Bob Saget.

I still find things funny, but not in a way to make me burst out laughing (and certainly not at anything while watching Family Guy or Dane Cook or Robin Williams). It's sort of depressing to consider that the appreciation of something rewards you by giving you diminishingly less reasons to appreciate it, but that's life, I guess.