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Monday, June 29, 2015

Dinnertime Humor

My Facebook exploded this weekend, I don't know about yours.

In discussing this over family dinner on Sunday, I decided to share my favorite status that I read, posted by my cousin. I pulled it up on my phone and read it aloud:

"The American people have been served a great justice this week and we are a stronger people for it. My heart is full and I will proudly tell my children and their children how I lived in a time where wrongs were righted and brave people stood on the right side of history. In short, thank you, Disney, for banning selfie sticks."

I looked up, excited to see everyone's reactions. Logan and Michael had stopped paying attention by the second sentence. Brandon too. Natalie was still waking up. Stephanie and Craig chuckled. Stephen's parents blinked at me.

"Isn't that funny?" I prompted.

"They don't get it," Stephen said. He shook his head. "Read it again."

I did. This time Natalie gave a little laugh.

"So do you get it this time?" Stephen asked his parents, who were still looking blankly at me.

"I just....it's crazy, the way this world is going," Mama Shimp said.

"Okay, but do you get what he was doing, with that status?" Stephen said. He grabbed the phone. "You don't get it, because you probably weren't on Facebook this weekend. But seriously every other status was something like that, but talking about gay marriage."

"Oh, I heard about the new bill, I know that's what you're talking about. I get it." Mama Shimp did not get it.

"No. Diane." Craig tried to jump in to explain and got interrupted by Mike.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute, now I'm going to sound really naive here....but what I don't get is, what is a selfie stick?"

The whole table erupted with forehead smacks, groans, and cries of "A selfie stick?? Oh my gosh, DAD!"

"I know what that is!" Mama Shimp cried excitedly. "Mike! You are old!"

Once everyone knew what a selfie-stick was, we had to then explain that Disney just banned selfie-sticks.

"Okay, but," Mama Shimp frowned, "What does that have to do with gay marriage?

"It's just funny," Stephen said feebly. "It doesn't really have to do with that. He was trying to make it sound like he was talking about gay marriage, but then you get to the end and realize he's talking about selfie sticks at Disney parks, and it's funny."

Jokes aren't usually funnier when you have to explain them. Usually, they just kinda turn lame. But in this case, I think it was the opposite. The joke was much funnier after our half-hour explanation of it.

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