Laughing at Life’s Imperfections

It's interesting how humor, in its many forms, often hinges on the unexpected or exaggerated. A lot of the time, I don't catch on to sarcasm right away, which makes me feel like the gullible odd one out. Take, for example, last month when my dad and stepmom started making fun of how badly I parked at a restaurant. Half of my car was hanging over two spaces, and they sarcastically asked if I was planning on becoming professional at parking. At first, I thought they might have been genuinely upset with how poorly I parked, but then I realized they were just exaggerating the situation for a comedic effect.

In the SNL clip we watched this past week in class, the woman secretly involved in the lesson says, "why do you have to criticize everybody?". This made me think about humor in general and how a lot of humor is based on making fun of people sarcastically or singling out one person. Humor often comes from something small and is exaggerated so we can laugh at something we wouldn't normally find funny. Making jokes, like my dad did when he mocked my parking, almost becomes a way of coping with life's imperfections. Humor allows us to laugh at ourselves and not take everything so seriously all the time. It helps us find relief in our mistakes and creates fun and laughter out of them.