Where does humor come from? Does anyone really know? Sure, the scientific answer would probably include places like your brain, your environment, and your upbringing, but is that truly where humor comes from? Perhaps humor comes from someplace else that can't be seen. Perhaps the funniest of those among us have a direct line to the Comedy Dimension. That might help explain how some people can be funny in an instant, like Minute Rice or pudding. They have supernatural humor powers. Faster than a speeding punchline! More powerful than a Four Loko! Able to leap tall coffees in a single bound! X-ray vision that can see the humor in anything. I suspect that many of these superhuman comedians are hiding in plain sight, posing as dull Clark Kents and working plain jobs, until the next comedy tragedy strikes where they strip off their suits and bear their chests to show the Super C logo underneath. They dash off to save the day, dropping one-liners in their wake. It very well could turn the world backwards on its axis, causing time itself to reverse.
Comedy is very much like a superpower though, isn't it? There are very few people who are truly funny. Sure, almost anyone can make you laugh once in a while, but not many can keep that up without burning out. And also like superpowers, there are many different types of humor out there. Everything from the worn out tropes of cliched humorists to the hate humor of insults and belittlement to the comedians who have somehow found a way to connect to their fans in ways most comedians can only dream of. The Legends of Humor. The League of Extraordinary Comedians. These are the people whose comedy never dies. It lives on, both on its own and through imitation. Those are the comedians that can span generations, and they are very rare indeed.
So, is comedy learned or is it inherited? I would think that there has to be at least some natural ability there to build upon. I don't think you could take the average person with no sense of humor, send them through the 12-step program "How to Become a Hilarious Bastard", and by the end of it they're cracking up their friends like they're God's gift to laughs. Humor and what people find humorous can't really be quantified and then formulated to be taught as a curriculum, not without a strong Foundation of Funny first. Of course, that doesn't mean that somebody can't find their humor later in life. It's not as though you have to be funny straight out of the womb, making baby fart jokes to the OB and flinging jokes at the nurses like an infant shaped comedy catapult. The formative teenage years seem to be most people's time when they discover their funny, which should be no surprise. It's when most people start experimenting with life and pushing boundaries. Some people though, never grow out of the adolescent humor phase, and for them, perhaps that's fine. Diff'rent strokes. There really is no one way to be funny.
Humor is what you make of it. Some people succeed at it, some people don't. Some people think they're funny when they're not, and some people think they're not funny at all but really are. Comedy is a fickle beast, and where does it all come from? Who really knows. And perhaps it's better that way. Because you know that if anyone could figure out where comedy truly comes from, they'd dry it out, shove it into little pills, and sell to you on late night TV as the cure-all to a humorless life.
