They keep telling me I am not funny. So I get confused because, as I grew up, my mother always told me how funny and intelligent I was. She said I was the smartest kid on the block, but now things look different. People say I’m always serious, never funny. I think I’m sometimes frightening them with my stiffness. Of course I don’t enjoy the “funny" remarks people make about my life when they say in such cute turns of phrase that I am a loser… I never get all those jokes about my bad haircut and about my ugly dog. I am not funny, my friends say.



So, one morning I woke up and I decided I would be funny. I asked someone for advice and they told me a funny person is someone who is ready to always pop up a joke. “What kind of joke?" I asked. They said it doesn’t matter, but I would be considered the funny guy wherever I go as long as I make a joke all the time, even one that is sometimes inappropriate. I was also told that the “yo mama joke" is the best one around. I never mastered up the courage to say that I had no idea what a yo mama joke was. I thought I would be able to figure it out as I go.

So what happened was that I started to go to work (and I work for a prestigious and respectable company) and whenever anyone said anything, I would pause a little and then say my joke. My joke was the yo mama joke. As I didn’t know what it really was, my yo mama joke actually meant that I said “yo mama" whenever anyone said anything serious. My first yo mama joke went like this:

“Hi Jason, my friend said, as we met down the street."

“Yo mama! What’s up?"

“Hmmm, okay?! I was having a walk with my mom and doing some shopping."

“Yo mama!" I replied sure of myself.

I thought this was my first good joke. I hoped I was on my way to become a professional, but Catherine (my friend) didn’t think it was funny. However, I strongly believed she was the one who didn’t get the joke as she didn’t have a sense of humour (in my opinion).

My next yo mama joke would not be wasted on someone like Catherine, I told myself. I figured I’d better address people who know what a funny joke is and who would understand each funny joke I make. This is how my next yo mama joke went:

“Hi Jason! My friend Kit called me this evening."

“Yo mama, I replied with ultimate conviction that I would indeed make someone laugh at last.

“What’s up with you Jason? What’s with all the yo mama stuff?"

“Yo mama, you don’t get me. I make all these funny jokes and people don’t get them. This yo mama joke is such a waste of a funny joke. You just reminded me of Catherine now. She didn’t get it either." I said disappointed as I was beginning to have doubts about how funny others were. The yo mama joke was the ultimate funny joke and my friends were not getting this. I thought that, if they were my friends, they should have at least pretended I said a funny joke even if it wasn’t funny.

That’s when I decided I would not waste one more funny joke on them and a good chance to prove them wrong would be to write down on a piece of paper every funny joke I could come up with. This way, I would gather material for a book of funny jokes and I would start the book with the story of my first failures, which were just in anticipation of the future success. By sharing the beginnings of my life as a comedian with my readers, the first yo mama jokes and how they were misunderstood, they would be inspired and learn not to give up when an audience doesn’t get a funny joke. “Audiences are less informed than we are. We are the comedians, the authority. We know better than them." I thought with conviction. “And then Catherine will read my book and she will finally see that my yo mama joke was good. She will laugh at the funny joke when she will be ripe to understand it and she will also regret not having believed in me. All this will happen when I become famous."

No, all this is not a funny joke, it’s just the confession of a person who hasn’t yet heard a “yo mama joke", though you may wonder who hasn’t? ...