PSA: Nobody Is Joking (Let's Change That)

Anyone who knows me well knows I rarely take anything seriously... until I do.

Infertility? Serious as a heart attack. Breast cancer? I lost my best friend to the disease at 31, so aside from some dark humor with mutual friends (IYKYK), I'll have you know I'm on my way to my annual mammogram as I type this.

But then I came across a clip of Adam Devine on his podcast, This Is Important, saying, "No one is joking" — and I felt it deep in my soul. Not because it was profound, because it was the opposite of profound.

I've said before that I hate small talk. But this clip got me rethinking what I actually hate, which isn't small talk exactly; it's talk with no personality behind it. What I'm after isn't just depth — it's a shared sense of humor. Someone who finds the same things funny I do, which, if I'm honest, is not much. It's the mundane stuff, the things people do that are hilarious and don't even know it.

Seinfeld is one of my all-time favorite shows, and I compare myself to Jerry more than is probably healthy, because WHAT DO YOU MEAN the only thing you can think to say to me is that it's "chilly for mid-September"? A whole other person is standing in front of you.

It's become even more obvious since becoming a mom. I'm surrounded by parents all the time, not always of my own choosing, and half of what passes for conversation at pickup is a script: weather, traffic, whose kid has the stomach bug going around. I don't dislike any of these people. I just want, every once in a while, for one of them to say something weird enough that I still remember it by dinner (and laugh).

I want my kids to have a sense of humor, too — the real kind, not the class-clown kind. The kind where you notice things. Where you clock the absurd detail nobody else is going to mention out loud, and you mention it, and somebody across the room gets it.

I want my kids to know: you can sob at a funeral and still make the joke only that person would've laughed at. Neither one cancels the other out.

I'm not saying there's no time or place to be serious. I clearly know there is. But maybe if we didn't take ourselves quite so seriously all the time, life would just be a little more fun. No?