Humour

A sense of humour is an important aspect of a writer's personality and 'writer's voice'. Memories that expose incidents involving humorous anecdotes can be powerful motivators. Writers often share experiences from their own lives when writing, whether they be part of a larger fictional work, or stand alone as articles or internet posts. The Writer's Circle focussed on sharing humorous incidents as a writing assignment in November of 2010. Below are a couple of the presented works:


                            

The Funniest Thing I Remember Happening to Me.

I was very young I know – too young to know that what I was about to do was very wrong for a young girl to be doing. Especially coming from the family I was coming from.

I had this friend – a very dear friend and she lived with her sick mother and an old aunt. Also in the house were two of her first cousins – may I say worthless cousins. That’s why my mother never ever wanted or allowed me to go down through the bush to visit my friend.

Anyway, this particular day my friend got on to a packet of cigarettes and stole two out of the packet. She also stole a pack of matches from her cousin. We then went into an abandoned car which was parked quite near. This is going back to the 1940’s when the only mechanic was a Mr. Ralph Joyce on Bodden Road. He had cars piled up on the road for repairs so we found an old Ford and got into the back seat. This old Ford had a back window that was quite small – just big enough for someone to see through.

Well, we started our experiment of having a smoke. Put the cigarette in between our lips – meanwhile, we’re giggling our heads off, then we struck the match, put it to the cigarette and took our first puff when we saw a shadow come over us, two eyes peeping through that tiny window, and an old lady saying to us “Unna having a lil’ puff eh?" Well I tell you we got out of that car so quick and so frightened that she would tell my mother especially, that I never really ever though of taking up smoking since that experience.

By: Joan Wilson.

                                

One of the Funniest Things That Happened to Me.

By: C.G. Wilson

I was working for a small firm of Quantity Surveyors in London, England. There was the owner, Henry Derek Ide, the senior surveyor who I will call Tony (I have forgotten his name), myself and two juniors, John and Gerry. There were also two secretaries – again I have forgotten their names but they do not feature in the story.

Derek (he never used his first name) was a man in his fifties and I was just twenty. Tony was in his early thirties and John and Gerry were both seventeen.

I never liked Tony very much and I suppose I resented him being there as when I joined the firm it was just Derek and me. Derek was a portly man, smoked a pipe and had no sense of humour. I’m not surprised because his wife was a horrible woman. Whenever she came to the office she would put him down in front of us, order him to take “that silly thing (his pipe) out of his mouth” and berate him about how untidy his desk was. She never gave any of us more than a glance. We didn’t exist.

Tony tried to be nice to me but gave up and turned his attention of ‘trying to be nice’ to John and Gerry. They didn’t like him much either. He was so false and he would run to Derek with our misdemeanours, like having a game of office cricket when Derek was out.

We used to get luncheon vouchers, as part of our salary, which were so small in value you couldn’t get a proper meal from them. They were free but only up to a certain value and that value was never raised by the Government. So we used to save the vouchers up and have a good meal at the end of the working week. The other days we all brought sandwiches from home. Whilst the others, including Tony, enjoyed a variety of fillings every day, I had the same cheese filled ones. Cheddar. I never changed my diet. Cheddar cheese sandwiches and I enjoyed them. I would leave the packet on my desk neatly wrapped up, as 12 noon, on the dot, I would open them up with a cup of coffee at my side and devour them heartily.

On this particular day, I opened my sandwiches and started to eat. After only a few bites I realised something was wrong. I couldn’t bite through the cheese. I suspiciously opened the top layer of bread to reveal a thick piece of cardboard had been inserted with the words “HARD CHEESE?” written on it. Everyone laughed, especially Tony, as he was the culprit. He was finally a hero with John and Gerry. I vowed to get my revenge.

It came one afternoon a week later. Derek had gone out and was not expected back. Tony went upstairs to go to the bathroom. We all knew he would be some time as he took his newspaper with him. I unscrewed the shade and from his desktop lamp. It was one of those big funnel shaped ones with a large metal ring at the bottom and a small one at the top all covered with a coloured canvass. To get to the stairs you had to actually go outside the office through a big wood paneled door. I opened the door, leaving it slightly ajar, and carefully placed the lampshade with one edge in top of the door and the other edge just perched on the top of the architrave that surrounded the door frame. I then put the waste bin a few feet in front of the door with Tony’s furled umbrella sticking up out of it, for good measure. I was now back as the hero of John and Gerry.

We waited. It was quicker than we thought. The door opened and the lampshade dropped beautifully on top of the incoming person’s head. The person gave an exclamation of shock and walked straight into the bin with the umbrella striking right in the stomach. The person stumbled to the floor still shouting.

There was a stunned silence from all of us. No laughter and the awful feeling of sheer horror enveloped me. The person coming into the room and now lying angrily on the floor wasn’t Tony. It was Derek’s wife!