30 April, 2018

Zingers!

I married a funny man. A bonafide joker.

If you follow his blog, you know it is primarily funny stories. Even now that we live overseas and his posts are more about places we go and things we do in the expat world, they are still typically told with a heavy dose of humor.

Twitter? All jokes.
Facebook? Jokes. 
To the extent that when we started dating and my friends and family started friending him on facebook, I cautioned them, "Just remember only about 15% of what he posts is true." When he first announced our plans to move to China, he prefaced it with "THIS IS A SERIOUS POST" and still found that many people disbelieved him.

This doesn't frustrate him, as he takes great pride in his zingers, even if they aren't really zingers. It just makes him laugh.

Now we are preparing for another move, away from Beijing. His idea was to not tell anyone back in the States until afterwards. Since we started looking for apartments here this past winter and I had freely been sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly of this hunt, I'm onboard! After we get our new apartment in a city no one expected, I'll just post something like "Hey! We finally found our new place!" and explain a bit.

~~~SIDEBAR ~~~
My dad, ever since retiring in the Midwest, has his own "zinger": They built the house just right "but the driveway is just about 1,000 miles too far north." Think about that. He's funny too, but in a different way. So I will have to make that joke and know that even if no one else gets it, he will.
~~~

Back to my situation: 
Turns out (either his mind changed or there was a miscommunication) Brett has no intention to ever share a "we've moved" post. He figures he'll just wait for people who never believe him anyway to finally notice that all his location tags are really far from where they thought we lived. Zinger!

I don't know how well that will work, since anyone who is friends with both of us might see my announcement. 

Do you have success with jokes (or sarcasm) in social media or any other kind of writing? I think my humor must be too acidic, I'm almost always misunderstood. I'm best sticking to the facts in my writing.

This concludes the A to Z challenge! I hope you'll come back again. If you comment, please include either a link to your blog, or at least the name you use in the Master List, so I can find you.

13 comments:

  1. I save my humour for face to face interactions - I find humour has a habit of backfiring on SM because people like to take offence. I'm also not good at writing humour blog-wise so all praise to your man for being clever enough to carry it off. It's been lovely meeting you during the AtoZ - I can't believe we've reached the end - I just have my wrap up post next Monday and I'm planning on an e-book to see if I can produce one - then I'm done and dusted!

    Leanne | www.crestingthehill.com.au
    Z for Zero in on your target

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    1. Me too. I'm better in a support role, humor-wise. I'm great at laughing at his jokes, happy to take a prank to the next level, but not great at coming up with the funny.

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  2. South Africans love to tell jokes, but they are just as quick to take offense. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that most of the jokes are either in bad taste or just plain bad, haha. Congratulations on completing the challenge. www.hesterleynel.co.za

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    1. Yeah, moving to China was not the best idea for my husband's humor. He tends to be sarcastic; Chinese humor favors puns.

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  3. Humor *is* tricky but yes, I generally can carry it off. (Which is NOT to say that there haven't been spectacular failures, as well as low-level misses.) My problem is that I can't keep it out - so it was learn to accommodate it or give up.

    Good job on the challenge!
    I'll be happy-dancing in the corner, if anyone feels like joining in...

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    1. Good point. You have to work with what you have!

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  4. I aspire to humor. Alas, most people are horrified by my blog rather than amused by it. I mean most of my stories to be humorous.

    Liz A. from Laws of Gravity #510.

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    1. I love reading. I love funny. I would love to be able to write it, BUT I make decent money being good at writing straightforward business communication.

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  5. i'm not sure how well not telling anyone will work… People might be too confused to say anything. And what if someone wants to send a card or come visit?

    Congrats on your move though! And completing the challenge!

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    1. We'll see how it plays out in about a month or two!

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  6. I've been told by several people that I have a very honest demeanor which makes it difficult sometimes to tell jokes. Conversations sometimes go like this:
    Me: Did you know Columbus had four ships?
    Other person: Really?
    Me: Yeah, the fourth one fell over the edge.
    Other person: I didn't know that.
    And then a minute later they'll say, "Wait, what?"
    The upside of that is their delayed reaction always makes me laugh.

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    1. Those are my favorite kind of jokes I like to tell. Just dropping in ridiculous facts in the middle of a serious conversation. I find it even funnier when they don't catch it.

      FRIEND: Beautiful weather today?
      ME: Yeah. They say the weather was just like this during the attack on Pearl Harbor. If you believe that happened. *walk away sipping my drink*

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    2. I just don't have the quick wit. I can go along with someone else's joke... if I know it's a joke.

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