Splinters In Your Career

What treasure lies in your past? Image via Wikipedia

Chris at That Guy Over There pointed out that I had forgotten to call “No Backsies,” and followed up this friendly tip by tagging me again for The Seven Things Meme.  I promised some ideas about mining your past in There’s Gold in Them Thar Ills, so I am using an item from my past to illustrate seven humor principles. Efficiency baby!

I have owned and driven over 50 vehicles since I started to drive. I have also had a lot of jobs.

Now let’s try and make it humorous.

Strange Comparisons: Most people tend to keep their life in compartments; home, work, vacation, hobbies, sports, etc. all have their own slot in our heads. The idea of comparing how many cars you have owned to jobs is unusual and makes them stop and think after the laugh. Taken in another direction it becomes superstition, for example always wearing the same “lucky” socks because you once won wearing them.

Extend: I usually say career rather than job, since career implies a longer term commitment than job.

Build: Then I mention that I just bought my 33rd car. (or whatever number it happened to be at the time.) Most people could not name how many cars they have owned. If they can then it is a small number. This builds on the earlier laugh, since, evidently, most people tend to keep cars and jobs longer than I do.

The Rule of Large Numbers (which I just made up) is at work. Lot’s of something can be funny. If you can remember all of your jobs and all of your cars, you have probably had fewer than me. And since we all believe we are pillars of steadiness and reliability, the idea of someone actually admitting to a variety of occupations is surprising.

Observation: Humor comes from noticing things others don’t notice. The question: “Why do we park in a driveway and drive in a parkway?” is a classic illustration. As humorists it is our challenge to bend, twist and distort memory and observation to our own purposes. The trash can picture in An Important Message about Food and Trash, or much of the stuff on AmyOops! all illustrate this. People are so busy they don’t take time to notice all the weird things that surround us, much less to stop and think about them.

Self-Direction: What is the safest target? Yourself! What is the safest target? Yourself! Name a humorist, comic or comedian (other than Don Rickles) who has made a career out of insulting others? Picking on others can get short term laughs but lead to long term failure. Unless incredibly well done, it can come off as mean-spirited. It can make people uncomfortable, and uncomfortable people turn the page, click the next link, change the channel, or look for old Cosby episodes on TVLand. If your goal is to make people uncomfortable and therefore more open to change, and you are lessening the blow by using humor. That can work, but that’s a topic for another post.

Pre-Emptive Strike: If I am going to be accused of being a loser who can’t keep a job… I want to do the accusing myself. If I have already mentioned a painful incident concerning a bicycle and bottle rockets, then Cousin Bill can’t torture me with it later. I have chosen the battlefield and used the bunker buster bomb. All that’s left is the scorched earth of second-rate and not so funny incidents. I have prevailed! I can’t erase the past but I can mold it to my own uses. If anyone’s going to make an ass of me, it’s me!

The title comes from an old aphorism: When sliding down the banister of life… try not to get Splinters In Your Career.

I bet a lot of you out there have some career splinters that were painful to remove. Set yourself free by sharing the pain. Comments are open.

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