I would like to be serious about humour. I have tried many times to write comedy but nobody laughed. However, my two most serious stories made everybody laugh.
The first was a short story about an earthquake survivor. I based it on a true story. I described how a girl in an earthquake held onto her friend hand. In the morning she was rescued and the rescuers found nobody was attached to the hand.
First somebody had to tell her. Then she had to deal with it.
My short store followed two other comic pieces. However, mine was the one which had everybody in hysterics.
Later that week I met a fellow writer (the late Karl Blau) in the street. He told me how much he had enjoyed my comic piece.
I confessed it was based on the truth. What happened in the USA bombing. I thought everybody else would have read the story and already know it.
When Karl hear it was a true story, he did not look cross or unimpressed, he laughed even more. I still don't know why.
The second strange piece of unintended humour was about my beloved Uncle Ronnie. I wrote what I thought was a very sad true dramatisation of how he was in dispute with his mother.
He was a vegetarian. She was a Jewish mother who tried to make people eat.
He was colour blind. He could not see flowers. My grandparents loved gardening and flowers.
My audience was falling about laughing. My reading of the piece, exaggerating the two characters, helped.
