My wife can make me laugh pretty hard. Not as hard as she can make herself laugh, of course. She’ll get near tears trying to make a joke she already knows is going to make her laugh. It’s pretty damn cute, if I do say so maself! Humor has always been a part of our relationship. I can say, with some degree of certainty, that she is far out of my league. However, I’ve also been able to make her laugh. Now, we make our kids laugh, and they make us laugh; it’s the best.
I didn’t have a ton of relationships before I began dating my wife (would you believe women usually weren’t too interested in a bespectacled pot smoker who often fluctuated between “chubby” and “out of shape?”). I’ve always maintained my sense of humor, but I found myself dating women who weren’t very funny. It wasn’t intentional; it just worked out that way, and the relationships suffered because of it (and for other reasons). I value humor in a relationship, which is yet another reason I am similar to Jamie Lee Curtis.
“But the one thing I cannot do for myself is to make myself laugh,” Curtis recently explained for a cover story in the AARP magazine. She would go on, noting that “she values humor as a lifesaving trait.” Same, girl, same. My wife and I have not had even close to the same problems I had in my old relationships, but any issues we have had (we’re human, not perfect) have been overcome, thanks in no small part to humor. It is not only a lifesaver but a relationship strengthener, and that’s the case even though one of us isn’t Christopher Guest.
Of course, Jamie Lee Curtis values humor; she’s been married to one of the funniest actors alive for over four decades. “I married the funniest dude on the planet. Christopher Guest can drop me to the ground with a look, let alone a phrase,” she told the outlet. “It can be annoying to be married to somebody who can use his humor to disarm any natural rage that you might have, but it’s also an amazing blessing.” Calling a sense of humor a blessing and a curse makes a lot of sense.
It is also funny to me (and makes me happy) that Guest’s sense of humor isn’t hidden from his wife. He’s notorious for being a bit prickly during interviews, and I think that leads people to the presumption that he is only funny for the cameras. Instead, it appears he just doesn’t like turning it on during interviews, which I get. Why go out of your way to make an interviewer laugh when you can save it for home? Whose laugh is going to be better than your spouse’s? Nobody, that’s who.
