YOU EVER FORGET THE "PUNCH LINE?"

My Granddaddy Austin was possibly the funniest man that ever lived. He grew up poor, in rural North Carolina. I can't quite describe exactly how funny he was, but just trust me. He wasn't just funny in his daily comings and goings. He could tell jokes, and funny stories...really tell 'em.

In fact, his brothers were all the same way. I remember as a kid when we would go visit his family in North Carolina that he and his brothers would sit in the living room around "the stove" and tell jokes back and forth to each other for hours. Seriously...HOURS. And not one would ever be repeated.

I've always wondered why I couldn't remember the punch line sometimes of a funny joke. Turns out that my brain ain't fixed up all funny like his was. Oh, it's fixed up "funny," but not so much for joke-tellling. I came across this article, and found it very interesting.

In one ear and out the other

From the article:

There are plenty of other similarly illuminating examples of memory’s whimsy and bad taste — like why you may forget your spouse’s birthday but will go to your deathbed remembering every word of the “Gilligan’s Island” theme song. And why you must chop a string of data like a phone number into manageable and predictable chunks to remember it and will fall to pieces if you are in Britain and hear a number read out as “double-four, double-three.” And why your efforts to fill in a sudden memory lapse by asking your companions, “Hey, what was the name of that actor who starred in the movie we saw on Friday?” may well fail, because (what useless friends!) now they’ve all forgotten, too.

And:

A simple melody with a simple rhythm and repetition can be a tremendous mnemonic device. “It would be a virtually impossible task for young children to memorize a sequence of 26 separate letters if you just gave it to them as a string of information,” Dr. Thaut said. But when the alphabet is set to the tune of the ABC song with its four melodic phrases, preschoolers can learn it with ease.

And what are the most insidious jingles or sitcom themes but cunning variations on twinkle twinkle ABC?

Really great jokes, on the other hand, punch the lights out of do re mi. They work not by conforming to pattern recognition routines but by subverting them. “Jokes work because they deal with the unexpected, starting in one direction and then veering off into another,” said Robert Provine, a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the author of “Laughter: A Scientific Investigation.” “What makes a joke successful are the same properties that can make it difficult to remember.” (Whole article)

The article is well written, and very interesting...