Anyone could get used to sadness; to get used to humour was the harder thing. It was also the more necessary thing. The more hurt I found under my skin, the more convinced I became that humour and only humour was going to save me. Some people were more brittle than others. They were also more risible than others. It was a complex word to say they had a low standard for laughter. I came from a long line of idiots—connected not by blood but by being able to laugh at the smallest things.
As morbid as my words were, those who knew me well knew I had a terrible knack for making ill-timed jokes or how humour managed to find my life on its own. Perhaps, it was necessary to balance the ease with which I wandered in the depths of my mind. My brand of humour was peculiar. I found pleasure in ridiculous puns, everyday absurdities, harmless mannerisms. No story I shared with someone on a table was without a joke. If there was a living personification for the word klutz, it was me. I found it challenging to walk without falling, and I gave toddlers a run for their money in spilling things over myself.
Humans were essentially funny creatures, constantly threatened by the environment—made worse by the urban obstacles we faced daily. Laughter was easy to find. A jacket stuck in the door handle as you whiplashed back into a room you were trying to leave. Stepping on a puddle of water knowingly, and slipping. There was inherent clumsiness in us—even the smarter ones, especially the smarter ones.
Take the other day, for example. I walked, lost in the daze of some old memory. Just then, a dog looked at me from the other end of the street. We locked eyes. He was a stray, considerably large for someone who had to fend for food. In about a split second, he decided to give me a chase for my life. So, like any reasonable person, I ran. I was his special prey amidst about a dozen others. He chased me for a good hundred metres. When I stopped, I laughed for the hell of it. A man laughed at me too.
That evening, I learned how a dog chasing after you was yet another solution for escaping melancholy. Perhaps, not the most ideal one, but like any well-timed joke, it got the job done.