Remember the 90s, when everyone was fascinated with hidden talents? Okay, maybe not everyone, but certainly people who watched Figure It Out know exactly what I'm talking about. The whole premise of that show was celebrities solving puzzles so that super-skilled children would reveal their super-special hidden talent. I probably should never have watched that show, since seeing people my age do more interesting things than I could ever do gave me a huge inferiority complex and made me genuinely concerned that my parents would not love me if I could not walk through a hoop in my own arms without disconnecting my hands or mimic the sound of a domestic animal. But now, 18 and still unable to do any of these things (hell, I can't even roll my tongue up in that weird way everyone does...), I may just now have the chance to finally win my parents' love. I have the hidden talent of being an accidental comedian.
Before you get jealous, it isn't quite as fascinating as it sounds. It doesn't really make me a superhero, since I don't even have any sort of special costume (yet). But it would definitely be enough to get me a spot on Figure It Out, if it was still on and if it wasn't creepy for an 18 year old to go on a Nickelodeon show.
The talent is that I can make people laugh only when I am not trying to be funny. When I try to be funny, it results in crying babies and an awkward staredown. Awkward staredowns are especially awkward and uncomfortable when they take place in elevators. I will explain that later. (I would assume that it goes without saying that crying babies are also significantly worse in elevators, although, come to think of it, I've never been in an elevator with a baby.) The best way to explain all of this would be with examples.
Last Friday, in physics class, we were talking about cell phones and how they relate to radio waves. Our teacher got on the subject of frequencies and how, back in the day, there were only a certain number of frequencies available (I can't remember exactly how many because I was too busy laughing about the fact that he said "walkie-phone") and now there is a broad spectrum of frequencies for security purposes. He brought up that the government could use that to spy on you and tap into your phone conversations. Upon hearing this, my mind immediately snapped to a mental image of a person wearing a tin foil hat. The association makes perfect sense to me:
cell phones -> frequencies -> government spying -> tin foil hat
So I turned around to my friend, who was on the opposite side of the room, and said quietly, "Everybody put on your tin foil hats!" I expected a weak giggle, maybe even a chortle. What I got was room-wide uproarious laughter and it puzzled me, because I wasn't really at all intending to be funny.
Now we'll contrast that with a situation in which I tried to be funny. If this was real paper and not the internet, this is the place where you'd start to see tear drops on the paper--that's how difficult this story is for me to tell.
I was on the elevator at a convention I went to a couple weeks ago. My best friend was beside me and the elevator was filled with people I had met a day earlier at the convention, but didn't really know well enough to be social. Someone had pressed all of the buttons on the elevator, so we stopped at every floor. The people at the front of the elevator were talking about it, one of them having done it. I saw this as my golden opportunity to convince everyone in the elevator that I was totally a person worth getting to know. I waited for the perfect time to strike and said, "Can anyone identify the individual who pressed all the buttons?" The one who didn't do it pointed to the one who did and said his name, and the guy blushed a little. I could've stopped here with a slight groan and just come off as a slightly disgruntled, ornery man, but I felt the beautiful beams of opportunity shining down on me between the cracks of the elevator door and I wasn't about to let it go.
"Anyone have anything to cut the elevator floor with? It's a pretty long drop..."
A pause.
Silence.
I turn to my best friend, desperate for some sort of assistance, and I see her red-faced, chuckling to herself (note: at me, not with me), only able to choke out "that wasn't funny... that... wasn't funny at all..." Unable to come up with a compelling reason to get off at floors 4, 3, or 2, I stood in an elevator as the doors opened at every floor alongside people who genuinely thought I was a psycho with a murderous streak who threatened to kill people who press every button in elevators. All for trying to be funny.
I would try to think of a way to end this post wittily, but that would involve me thinking and trying to be funny, and you now know how that ends. I might end up saying something about burning your house down or poisoning your baby brother or making your breakfast tomorrow morning explosive.
