LEARNING ABOUT HUMOR AT BOYS STATE [W, 6-3-20]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

LEARNING ABOUT HUMOR AT BOYS STATE   [W, 6-3-20]

 Today I am doing a Zoom adult continuing education event for St. Mark’s UMC on the Bypass, about story telling as prayer, including humor in prayer-telling. Charlie Matson, the church’s coordinator of adult education special events, thinks it would be good for us to laugh together, even if only virtually, in this pandemic time.

So, I’ve been thinking about what makes something funny. It made me remember Boys State, that American Legion sponsored week for high school students, after their junior year, to learn politics.

Helen went to Girls State, at IU. The girls lived in the Men’s Quad but most of their activities took place in the Auditorium. Helen made a nominating speech for some office candidate on the Auditorium stage, and also sang there with her group on talent night, so she claims, correctly, that she has both spoken on and sung from the stage of the Auditorium.

My Boys State, a summer earlier, was similar to Helen’s experience, but Boys State was held at the School for the Deaf in Indianapolis. I suppose because it was cheap and had always been held there. [2]

I was in Savage City. There was a bright, charismatic kid in Savage who wanted to run for governor. I knew I did not have the savvy to run for governor, so I was pleased to be tapped as his campaign manager. I proved early on, as a high school junior, that I had very little political know-how. I couldn’t even get all the Savage guys to support him. He didn’t get enough votes to qualify for a second round so I switched my support to Primus Johnson, the eventual winner.

Primus was from East Chicago. He may have been the only black kid at Boys State. If not, he was one of a very few. He was definitely the first black governor of Indiana.

At talent night, each city performed a drama or sang a song. It was mostly songs, since that was easier. They were especially better than the feeble attempts some guys made at humor.

Nonetheless, one of the funniest things I ever saw happened at talent night. Some other city came out to sing a song, “Dry Bones.” There were about 40 guys in a city, if I recall correctly, so it was a big group on the stage, in three rows of risers.

The very last guy out was a Jon Lovitz, the actor, type. There’s just an aura about Lovitz that makes you start smiling, and then chuckling, and then laughing, just when you see him. He doesn’t have to do funny, he is funny.

The kid on stage was slightly shorter than average, slightly chubbier than average, but otherwise just average. He didn’t look different, for the uniform was white t-shirts and jeans. But he was holding a white, porcelain water jug under his arm.

We in the audience, of course, assumed the jug would be used somehow, and that it would be funny, just because of the kid’s Lovitz aura. Dry bones? Maybe he’d pour water on them or something. But he just stood there and sang, like everyone else, the jug tucked into his arm like a football. When the song was over, he just filed out with everyone else.

Nothing had happened, but it was hilarious… precisely because nothing happened. It was our anticipation, and the consequent opposite reality, that made the humor, that made it an event that I remember to this day, 65 years later.

In retrospect, my guess is that, being at the end of the line, as they marched in, he passed the pitcher on a table and grabbed it as he went by and held it through the song and just let people wonder. He thought it would be funny. It was.

I didn’t learn much about politics that summer, except that I wasn’t very good at it, but I did learn something important about humor. And about life.

Sometimes nothing is something. And funny.

John Robert McFarland

1] I think it’s called Wright Quad now.

2] the Hoosier Boys State web site says that the first year, 1937, it was held at Butler University, then at the Indiana State Fairgrounds from 1938-1941, and then at Indiana School for the Deaf until 1955, when it switched to IU. I was in the last year at the Deaf School.