Dear LPG,

I have a bit of a sad story to tell today.

You know how people have a habit of making their minds up about what sort of person you are after having known you only for a few minutes.  Most people who come across me for the first time think of me as a fairly serious, sombre sort of person and I have decided that today is the day that I need to break the mould, or at least make a dent in it.

I was never the most popular boy at school and I have an extra understanding wife who often makes people laugh with ease.  I don’t know how I managed that without the slightest inkling about chat up lines either.  I survived 45 years of office jobs, beginning as a messenger and graduating to middle management, and there were a few changes of industry along the way, but through all that time I knew what it was like to never have an interesting, good or vaguely funny story to tell.  Some people just make the room light up as they offer one-liners which have their audience in stitches, while I am the person who smiles at everyone else’s jokes while anything I try to tell fails to raise even a modicum of a smile and leaves me with a few flat faces around me because the people listening either don’t understand, have heard it before or are not amused; although I have had the very occasional bit of success.

And things are no better now I have retired.  Retirement is often about making a completely new routine and friends, and arriving on your own at one venue or another, in the hope that your dynamic personality will allow you the presence of mind to find that funny short answer to one of those questions that one of the welcome committee asks, but this is still a relatively major challenge for me.  For some reason I think that the ladies don’t have as many problems with this whatever their age and I am wondering if I am the only pensioner who has had to get through life without that gift for provoking a little humour.

I also found a bit of information that explains why one’s funny bone is so funny.  It is all about the funny feeling you get when you knock the thing from a certain angle.  Perhaps I need to learn that trick if I want to spend at least some of my future getting a smile that way until I manage to be funnier. 

For me this could be the worst day in the year because today is National tell a Joke day if LPG has posted my message on the right day.  So I have done a little homework and looked up a few jokes on the internet in the hope that I can stop being the joke because of my lack of amusing quips to add to the conversation, and for anyone who has my problems I suggest that, if we start today reading up on the subject and practising now, by this time next year we might come over as more dynamic people who can deliver a good joke when required. 

I have left a few suggestions for you try on and I have also found a few lessons on how to write a good joke.  I look forward to really making you laugh this time next year.

NF, Bickley.

NF offers readers some homework…

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