Trying to wring laugh from young is no joke

Chris Northover PHOTO/FILE

I felt just a wee bit patronised when I got petrol a few days ago. I felt like a resident of a home for the bewildered and infirm who had wet the bed.

The reason? I know I hadn't got my walking frame stuck in their sliding door ... perhaps it was that I can never remember if they take AA Card or Flybuys? Yes, that's it.

The new normal - your wallet is packed with so many credit cards, bank cards, loyalty cards, business cards and word fluff that it takes the sharp eyes and the deft fingers of the young to take part in commerce. And we are being laughed at for it ... I think my human rights are being further diminished by the month.

But that is not the half of it. My friends are noticing that humour is missing from their lives, except when they are mixing with people of their own advancing years.

It is what we do - especially older blokes. It is like our version of shaking hands. We make a joke when we meet our friends, or maybe a different sort of joke when we meet someone for the first time.

It is how we suss out where someone is coming from. How they are feeling; or what sort of person they are. And, depending on how well we know someone, the jokes can be subtle, to downright rude.

But not to the intolerant youth. More and more, any kind of joke will fall flat, and I have figured out what it is.

Yes, I can now tell you what the problem is - and it is not you. Except, perhaps, that you had the audacity to get old. Well, survive to over 40, that is.

You see, humour depends on shock value. An unexpected ending. A logical but absurd conclusion. A truism taken to a predictable, but painful end. No one really knows what makes humour funny, but I think you get the picture.

Now, enter the young. Those we have willingly sent to be corrupted in our schools. To be made "politically correct" by earnest young school teachers, who themselves were moulded this way by university professors who harbour more hidden agendas than an old Kremlin Politburo meeting.

The young have been taught to weigh each statement to judge for themselves whether it passes the acceptability test. To hold each sentence up to the template of political correctness. To make a judgment: Will it denigrate anything the proletariat value; is it going to offend?

Humour depends on the absurdity of the moment - the snap realisation of what has been said. A good joke brings in logic, references and truisms that must be processed in a split second if they are to be funny.

When everything that is heard must be processed in this dreary mill of Marxist thought, the moment has gone. The joke falls flat at the feet of the intolerant youth.

Over time, no one will expect to be entertained by wit or banter, or to see "the funny side" of things; it is no longer worth the effort. Paradoxically this has meant the re-emergence of slapstick humour: the slip-on-a-banana-skin/bucket-of-water-over-the-door type of joke. At least children find it funny.

So where was I? Oh yes. Well, there was this geriatric one-legged Islamic Scotsman, an Irish whale hunter, and a red-haired Maori lesbian SIS spy, and they all walk into a bar hand in hand ...

Chris Northover is a former Wanganui lawyer who has worked in aviation, tourism, health and the environment - as well as designing electric cars and importing photo-voltaic panels.