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Written by Onsembe Mengo
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Wednesday, 30 July 2008 |
Irony.
I saw Chinese soldiers on Segways preparing for the Olympics and
stifled a laugh. Stifling a laugh is pretty much the same as
suppressing a sneeze.
You see the sneeze coming and rapidly shut the
nasal cavity, holding your breath. Sometimes the sneeze goes away;
sometimes you explode with snort flying around. I stifled the
laughter, and away it went leaving a little chuckle trapped in my
throat. I sat trying to figure why it was funny.
I laugh a lot for several reasons, even because the doctor
prescribed it. More often than not I laugh to fit in, not because a
joke is funny. When watching a show with my friends and someone cracks
a racist joke, I laugh so they can know I have a good sense of humor
and get the joke. When someone tells an offensive joke, I too tell one
just to fit in. Sometimes I find myself laughing at jokes told in poor
taste, when I'm the only one in the room. I try to fit in with
the audience on whichever show the joke was told on. Every once In a while, I'd think
or dream of something extremely deplorable and will laugh, so neither
my dreams nor thoughts could feel left out.
So I tried figuring out why I had had to stifle the laugh, and the
best I could come up with was irony. But then, I'd seen
something ironical and didn't laugh: Justin Timberlake hosting the
ESPYs. Epitome of irony, but no laugh from me. I'm not saying JT (as my
friends used to call him. They're not my friends anymore) is gay. I'm
not trying to say he's not an athlete… he's not. I'm not saying I have
something against gay athletes (some of my friends are gay athletes,
etc). On the one hand you have JT; on the other you have a bunch of
guys in tip-top shape. They play together, shower together, slap each
other on the ass when a job is well done (not blown), they'll not
hesitate to take off their shirts for a random commercial, they're very
mindful of how they look… Okay, I get it. I didn't laugh because
there's no irony. JT hosted a gathering of these men at an ESPY Award
show. An award show? An award show!
So, the soldiers on Segways are funny on the merits of irony.
Soldiers are well trained—they are practically gods in the strength and
conditioning department. Segways are meant for the elderly, the obese,
the hopelessly lazy, or all the above. That's when I finally laughed.
It took so long to figure out, maybe next time I'll just laugh.
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I am ashamed to say, I too laugh sometimes at things I should be cringing at.