Oh dear, what can the matter be… I nearly got locked in the lavatory… Disaster was only averted by me suddenly realizing I still had my pager (for the volunteer ambulance in my pocket and instead of heading in the bathroom to shower, turned back to put it on the bedside table – and the bathroom door swung shut, and thereafter remained savagely obdurate. Much delicate surgery followed, most of which involved tools which are not normally available in the bathroom. The colorful terminology applied to the door, probably would have been even more colorful from the inside. I suspect the final moment of success was attained by a combination of both. The fact I got it open remains one the great mysteries of our time because the lock had essentially disintegrated, and the only way of removing it was via the face-plate, now inaccessible because the door was closed. Breaking down the door would have been the only option – and it is quite a solid door. If someone of, shall we say, less determination and more frailty, had been home alone and this happened while they were inside (which it should have, bar the pager) they could indeed have been there from Monday to Saturday… My dear wife is torn between taking a large hammer to assist in her future visits to the bathroom, (possibly something open to misinterpretation) or not closing the door.
The song (three old ladies got stuck in a lavatory) is a joke – but the reality is… well, old ladies – with no-one to ask where they were for days on end, who had this happen at home – it would not be funny. Well, not at the time anyway. Humor, and writing it is so often a thin line between the horrific and the ridiculous. The anatomy of laughter is complicated, and one person’s joke is another’s nightmare. Today’s nightmare is something you may well see the humor in… later. (I am sure I’ll see the funny side of the bureaucrats – later. The other shoe has not dropped, yet. I am working on making us safe.)
I do manage to make at least some people laugh with my books, and besides my terrible weakness for puns, what I often do is use the unexpected to provoke laughter. You might call it ‘inappropriate’ laughter – classically described as Charlie Chaplin walking toward the banana peel. You see him walking, you see the banana-peel, you see him walking closer to it. You see the banana peel. You KNOW what is going to happen. You wait… and he steps OVER the banana peel and… into the open manhole. The audience laughs. They cannot help it. If they’d seen the manhole (not the banana-peel), they might have groaned.
Talking of ‘stuck in the bathroom stories, Gerald Durrell did a hilarious piece on a Greek vessel where his sister – gets stuck. Her yelling gets attention, and the family and most of passengers come to enjoy the drama. The purser is summonsed, and gives the door a twitch and it opens… (the unexpected) and then pushes the hapless Margo back into the stall with him and closes the door to show her how it is done…
So: you tell me. What makes you laugh. Which books, and why?
Mad Genius Club 
15 responses to “Three old ladies…”
Ah.
I didn’t have a pager, it was just before going to bed, I was in the bathroom. . . . the lock broke.
I ended up not only taking apart the door handle with a nail scissors, but a fair chunk of the door, which was fortunately plywood. I calmed myself a few times by pointing out I was trapped WITH water, and someone would notice eventually, but it wasn’t very calming.
Escaped with distinctly cut up hands, two hours after I should have been in bed, and unable to get to sleep from agitation. And I had work the next day.
I read those first two phrases as verse and was waiting for the rhythm to continue… 🙂
I enjoy both the setup to a comical outcome (P G Wodehouse, Georgette Heyer) and the gleeful, inevitable, inexorable unfolding of events, whether or not they work out as planned. It’s both the complexity of the setup and the elaboration of the result. You get to chew on both the anticipation and the realization. As concrete examples — the finale of Heyer’s Friday’s Child, where the comical resolution is a series of collapsing sub-threads presented by the author. Or Heyer’s The Grand Sophy, where the entire resolution is a result of Sophy’s expert planning (and improvisation), glimpses of which the reader is vouchsafed throughout.
Short jokes (the sort you snort at) are different. Those are humor-in-passing, and great for character elaboration: sarcastic repartee, rueful comments, sardonic asides.
What I don’t like are jokes in fiction that refer to events outside the story world (a sort of wink, wink, nod, nod) — that breaks me out of my reader’s trance which I consider the number one sin. I don’t care how clever the author is — it’s all about the story for me, not the cleverness.
My childhood bathrooms had screwdrivers in them for this reason.
You can pry the pins loose…. IF you have a screwdriver.
Now imagine walking a six year old through “this is how you get the pins out”. From the wrong side of the door.
***********
I tend to laugh when either the tension is cut (Very Obvious Bad Guy who is about to eat the heroes instead asks if they’d like a cup of tea) or when someone does a Shining Moment of Awesome Snark instead of collapsing under the strain as has been *clearly* built up to.
Funny thing, but apparently laughter is a trauma response. I’ve been told by police who’ve dealt with some rather unpleasant things that it is not uncommon for someone to break down in what more or less sounds like laughter.
It’s also fun when a hero narrowly avoids doom to have them say or do something that is a totally natural response to what just happened, yet sets the whole thing moving again. It has to be a totally natural response though otherwise it just looks like the idiot ball.
*I’m not going to laugh. Laughing would be very bad right now. Very very bad right now.*
“You held back very well, but… usually danmaku are a little more curtain like.” *That was a mistake…*
“Oh, I can do that!”
*Too late!*
My husband laughs when he’s in intense pain– that has come in handy in a couple of fights in high school, apparently– and my dad laughs when he’s got a ton of beef on the hoof attempting to put a hoof through him, and he’s hoofing it away….
I’ve seen some online discussions of writers doing research get pretty silly after some of the more gruesome questions.
“We must either laugh, or we must cry, so tonight, let us laugh.”
Sometimes I wonder if what seems like the increasing viciousness of society is because laughter is so frowned upon as a reaction to someone’s problems. You must feel rage, and nothing else.
Probably just me.
I’m still waiting for the perfect place to use my own amusing locked door problem. This being locking myself out of the house.
Not a problem, right? The back door has a very large dog door.
Of course, at the time I was about eight months pregnant. Much careful contortion follows. and I’m in, picking myself up off the floor . . . as I realize that the dog door is in fact so large that i could have simply reached through and unlocked the door.
Footnotes.
Peter David makes me laugh. His writing is very lively and full of fun humor. Two favorites of his are his first volume of Captain Marvel from the late 90s and his Star Trek novel Q
…and his Star Trek novel Q Squared.
(I’m sorry. I messed up hitting the reply button.)
I’ve enjoyed various types of comedy over the years. When I’m feeling down I usually fall back on Temporary Insanity by Jay Johnstone (funny baseball stories), or its sequel Over the Edge, and How Much For Just the Planet by John M. Ford (over the top, out of character, Star Trek musical). P.G. Wodehouse writes such fun stories. And I’ve really enjoyed Robert Asprin’s Phule’s Company books.
My standards aren’t very high. I find things like the Three Stooges, Abbott & Costello, and the Flashman novels by Fraser hilarious.
I loved the Piers Anthony books with all the puns as a kid/teen. And the Myth Adventures by Robert Asprin, as well. And complicated puns are still my game.