anything boys can do

When I was in sixth grade, I had a social studies teacher who was funny. I thought. And he thought. And the other teachers thought. I loved when a teacher came to another teacher's door and they would whisper and giggle behind their gradebooks the same way we kids would do behind our Trapper Keepers. I loved when grownups did kiddo things. It made it less scary to grow up.
The other kids generally thought he was a jerk because he actually made us work at learning, but he was one of my favorite teachers ever.

He was witty, and quick, and I admire quick wit in people.

I always thought I was a riot. My friends' parents thought I was funnier than my friends did. My teachers more than my classmates. I took that as a compliment.

Around about the same age, our parents started letting us stay up late and watch television during sleep overs. We would turn down the television as low as it would go and watch HBO and Cinemax, and if we stayed up really really late, we could catch the old SNL that ran after the live one. It was the mid 80's. Old SNLs were always better than the new SNLs.

I remember seeing an Tim Curry skit. Him singing in an olden timey way about a lovely zucchini and I thought, that's brilliant. He's brilliant.
There was nothing dirty about the whole thing, on the surface. It was practically adorable. But I was old enough to know it was a dickjoke.

That social studies teacher, while he wasn't dirty, he would say things that would go over your head if you weren't listening. Or smart. I loved that.

I tried it. I tried it with my friends, my family, my classmates, my neighbors. I tried saying what I was thinking. What made me smile while walking down the street all by myself.

About half the people my one liners fell upon laughed, hysterically, the other half didn't say anything or told me it wasn't nice to do.

Because I'm a girl. Saying things that were slightly off color isn't a nice thing to do.

Girls aren't supposed to be funny, I gathered.
People like my teacher could be funny because they were men.
We couldn't be funny because we should have been busy doing something domestic.

So I kept my mouth shut for a few years.

I should've known better.
Girls on television weren't funny. Girls in books weren't funny. They still aren't, for the most part. They are either tight or slutty, giddy or sullen, strict or stupid. Usually annoying.

That irks me.
Stereotyping isn't funny.
Funny is funny.

I've been told (more than once, in so many words) that it's not that I'm so funny, it's just shocking to hear what I have to say come out of a face that looks like mine and people don't know what to do when they hear that so they laugh.

Or that I make a weird face or look ugly or use my body to be expressive while I tell a story so it surprises people into giggles. It's not so much the words, but the whole display of it.

Is that really it? I don't think so.
I like to believe that I'm being laughed with, rather than at.

I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing near you.

I'm terrible at telling jokes, but I'm a great story teller.

I pride myself on putting together a great sentence in no time flat.

Why do I still hesitate before I open my mouth?
Stop again before I let any sound come out?

I've said something that goes over mildly well at a party. A guy will steal my line to use on the other side of the room and from their mouth it goes over incredibly well.

I hate that.

I may say something about sex but it is never meant to be sexy or suggestive. About pain, about drugs, about terrible terrible things because if we can't laugh about them, we'll cry. It's how I deal.

I'm funny about other things too. Says me.
I think.
Maybe.

Humor is one of the few things that exist in my mind that girls have a harder time pulling off than do boys and I'm sick of it.