sense of humor

Anecdotal research of online dating sites says 89.7% of all women seeking male companionship, friendship, relationship, dreamboat, or knight in slightly tarnished armour want said person to make them laugh, have a sense of humor. Sense of humor. It is a recurring theme. Now, why is that? Because they are sad and need a clown? Clowns are not funny. Because laughter is the best medicine, as Reader's Digest would put it? Medicine to cure what? Existential angst? Talk about giving men performance anxiety! Granted, laughter is salubrious. And, true, it is hard to make yourself laugh, just as it is hard to tickle yourself. But this obsession, this assumption, this given, that the man must have a sense of humor, must make her laugh? C'mon. I'm a funny guy, so they say. On paper and in person. I've even had pieces of my humor (or humour in the Commonwealth) published. Alas, those humor-inducing qualities have not saved me from 1.73 divorces. Oh, sure, you will argue that it wasn't the humor that did me in, but the lack of it at the right time or the wrong kind of humor at the wrong time. Whatever. And if you look a little closer, research likely indicates that comedians as a class are not privately the happiest of people. When you come to think of it, much humor, maybe almost all humor, has an undercurrent of tragedy. We laugh at the person slipping on a banana peel. We laugh at the crotch injuries and bodies flying off trampolines on "America's Funniest Videos." Sense of humor? Really? Be careful what y'all ask for. Yuck, yuck. (Now that was not funny.)