Today I was thinking about how, in the first entry I wrote in this blog, I promised to be funny.

Looking back, that was a pretty hefty promise. People, after all, have very varied senses of humor. I, for example, just amused myself by using the term “very varied.” But some of you probably wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t pointed it out. And I know there are plenty of other instances of this.

When I flew to Florida last week, the snack on the plane was Save the Whales crackers. They were like cheese golfish crackers, but shaped like whales. The package said, “Save the whales. Or eat them now. Your choice.” Wow. Funniest airplane snack ever.

When I was in Sweden, when I took the bus to campus, we passed a pizzeria that was called “Dal Baffo” and had a picture of a buffalo on the window. Haha, thinking about it still makes me laugh. Funniest Swedish pizzeria ever.

Every day on the el, I can look out the window and see a hotel called “Hotel Wacker.” Come on. Perhaps only for those that have a slightly dirty mind, but still, funniest name for a hotel ever.

One night, I was watching VH1 with a friend, and he looked at me completely straight-faced and said, “Hey, did you know that in music videos, they record the singing and then they just lip sync?” He was honestly shocked by this. Funniest naive statement ever.

If you find all those things funny, congratulations. You will probably enjoy my blog.

But what really is it that makes something funny?

Sometimes it is family background. For instance, I got a message from a cousin of mine this morning that said, “You are a Rich. You are not supposed to be on time. Ever.” This tickled me, and I’ve been smiling about it ever since. You may think it’s cute. But only my parents and my sister and perhaps another cousin or two that read this blog will really find it as funny as me.

Sometimes it is a state of exhaustion. After I had just finished a whole day of hiking in Sedona, a friend and I checked into a hotel and found that we had a room with a handicapped bathroom. The shower was huge, there was no tub, and there was a phone in the bathroom. And for some reason, these perfectly understandable and expected details struck me as hysterically funny. I did not stop laughing for a full fifteen minutes. The friend I was with laughed too, but mostly at me, not at the bathroom. It was only my state of exhaustion that made it funny.

Of course, I also can’t leave out that sometimes it is all about your level of drunkenness. I came home from a night out at the bar once to find my roommate’s yoga ball in the middle of the living room. This, for some reason, was the funniest thing I had ever seen. Funny enough that I felt the need to pick up the ball (which is about three feet across), carry it to the doorway, and roll it down the porch stairs to my other roommate. I was laughing so hard I could no longer stand up.

I will also admit that most of the time, humor is all about timing and delivery. Every episode of Friends that I watch makes me laugh. However, ask me to tell you what happened in an episode, and I guarantee that my delivery will suck every bit of humor out of it. I’m a much better writer than I am speaker.

So, I guess humor is complicated. But I’m going to continue to attempt to write about the things I find funny. I hope occasionally, you think it’s funny too.

To quote my senior play, “And if I laugh at any mortal thing, tis that I may not weep.”

So perhaps if making you laugh is too lofty of a goal, I’ll settle for not making you cry.

But no promises.