Lori Duff Writes

My life is fairly stressful.  I know, I know.  I’m not alone.  We’ve all got our stuff to worry about.  Health, family,  jobs, burnout, money, politics, sports teams behaving as their million dollar salaries would justify…there are plenty of things to get your stress hormones pumping for.

Which is why, those three and a half minutes a day when I have down time, I prefer things that don’t get my stress hormones pumping.  I daresay that I prefer things that wash away cortisol.  I like to laugh.  I like good music.  I like playing games and creative activities. 

What I don’t like is stress in my entertainment.  Apparently, if you measure such things by the New York Times Bestseller list and Box Office ticket sales and whatnot, I am so far down to the left of the bell curve as to be statistically insignificant.

Stress sells.  Just ask Stephen King or the sixty zillion television shows that involve some muscled CIA operative peering around the corner with his gun out to see if the bad guys are gonna blow his head off.  We (not me: we as a society) like books and movies with dead people, or at least potential dead people.  The higher the stakes, the more entertaining.  Blood and guts?  Bring it on, baby!  Pow pow! 

Even people who don’t like their entertainment passive seem to like stress.  Let’s go scare the bejeebus out of ourselves on a rollercoaster!  How about a haunted house?  Let’s go hiking in some remote location where we might not get a cell phone signal and the wildlife has a good chance of killing us!  Awesome!  I was hoping to go down in a bear attack or being bitten by a cotton mouth.  Growing old is for the weak.

I get it – I get it.  The evidence shows I’m in a teeny tiny minority.  You can call me a coward, you can call me a big baby, you can call me whatever you like.[1]  Obviously there is something attractive about that adrenaline rush that everyone else gets that I don’t.    

I think the highest form of art is making someone laugh.  It isn’t easy to do.  Humor requires an element of surprise which requires a kind of creativity.  Some people are born without a sense of humor in the way that some people are born without sight or hearing.  I pity those people.  Laughter is such full-on joy.  You can’t think about anything while you’re laughing except that which you are laughing about.  It is infectious, contagious.  It’s why you laugh harder at jokes in a comedy club than you would watching the same comedian perform on your television.  The energy of the room makes you laugh harder.  What a gift that is to give someone – to give them relief from worry, stress, or sadness.  To give them a moment of pure joy.  You get a high without a hangover.  It’s legal in all 50 states no matter what your age.  Most religions approve of laughter.  You can laugh in front of your parents. 

It’s easy to scare people.  It’s easy to gross them out.  Jump scares are a cheap thrill. 

But a well-crafted joke?  That’s a thing of beauty.

What’s your favorite well-crafted joke?  Share it in the comments below. 

If you enjoyed this and want to read more like it, visit Lori on Twitter or on Facebook or read her award winning books.  You can order her novella, “Broken Things”, by clicking here.  The audiobook can be found on Audible or iTunes.  You can pre-order her novel “Devil’s Defense” coming in November 2024.

[1] Trust me, whatever you come up with, I’ve been called worse.  Likely on the record in a courtroom.

Lori Duff

Lori B. Duff is an award-winning author who practices law on the side.  Her latest book, “If You Did What I Asked in the First Place” was awarded the Gold Medal for humor in the Foreword INDIES awards in 2019. You can follow her on Twitter at @LoriBDuff and on Facebook. For more blogs written by Lori, click here. For more information about Lori in general, click here. If you want Lori to do your writing for you, click here. If you want Lori to help you market your book, click here.