Do you remember the first time you told a joke and no one laughed?

I don’t. It’s happened to me so many times I can’t remember the first.

I grew up in a home with lots of jokes, teasing and laughter. Our mother’s family was full of jokesters and Mom kept us laughing, too. Our family’s sense of humor was earthy. Dirty jokes were strictly forbidden (when Mom and Dad were home) but we siblings joked about most anything else — a baby sister sneezing milk through her nose, accidental flatulence, even a father who stalked an annoying box elder bug on the kitchen floor to bring a quick and certain end to its miserable life. Dad, however, saw no humor in our laughter.

When you have grown up this way you assume everyone else has, too. We learned that is not the case.

It is interesting when two people with different senses of humor marry. My first wife’s sense of humor was more refined than mine. (I married up!) My being the louder and more jocular of the two of us, it was my sense of humor that our children adopted as their own.

As the kids were growing up I often engaged them in tomfoolery while their mother simply smiled and shook her head. My son and daughter both love words and language and we share a fondness for puns, considered by some (but not us) the lowest form of humor. Their mother tolerated our pun fun but didn’t find the delight in it that we do.

(By the way, I was reading that new book, “The History of Glue,” earlier today. I couldn’t put it down.)

An early sign that our kids’ sense of humor came from their father occurred at Brookfield Zoo in Chicago when they were children. One of the cow elephants we were watching indelicately relieved herself, creating a large and loud splash. Fortunately, we were standing far enough away to avoid the spray.

Like most kids witnessing nature at its most fundamental level, our kids giggled. Two older women were standing nearby and one of them sternly exclaimed, “How rude!”

Our kids lost it! Their mother and I hoped the woman was thinking they were laughing at the elephant. They were really laughing at someone who was offended by an elephant simply doing what elephants have to do. The woman obviously did not grow up on a farm … or in our family.

We laugh at each other, too — heartily and unapologetically. While on a South Dakota vacation some 40 years ago a family member pointed out a large butte but pronounced it “butt” instead of “byoot.” That was long-remembered.

My current wife, Julie, and I have different senses of humor, as well. She frequently rolls her eyes but we laugh at each other’s jokes. Most of the time. Well, usually.

Many years ago a family member told us that when her 2-year-old daughter noisily broke wind during a church service the toddler immediately and loudly blamed her mother. The poor embarrassed mother said everyone in the pews around them snickered.

Now that’s funny!

I shared that story with a group of friends. All of them, except one woman, laughed. She gravely declared, “Oh my, that little girl must have a dietary problem.”

Dietary problem? Heck no! Healthy kids do these things. I recognized that our friend did not find a toddler tooting in church humorous and dropped the matter.

I try to be sensitive to the fact that my earthy and unsophisticated sense of humor is not universally appreciated. If you are offended by my ramblings today, I apologize. I pledge to not write about tooting toddlers again for at least a month.

As I have grown older I realize that the gift of humor our mother passed down to us is an invaluable way of coping with life. As a family we faced some difficult times but we never stopped laughing. It was our laughter — frequent and hearty — that got us through those tough times. As an adult, laughter has helped me through some rough spots.

One of my favorite journalists, the late Hugh Sidey, wrote, “Laughter on one’s lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty good grasp on life.”

Arvid Huisman can be contacted at huismaniowa@gmail.com. © 2025 by Huisman Communications.