Dogs and Humor

In Tuesday's Bleat, Lileks noted an angry letter he received from a woman who thought he should have let his dog, Jasper, eat a whole bunch of Jello. See last Friday's Bleat for the whole Jasper/Jello story. Then (Tuesday) Lileks linked to Dave Barry's blog, where Dave posted a letter from a similarly angry woman about a dog story he had told--a letter that revealed the unfortunate woman's humor-impaired condition.

I've found over the years that dog stories are the perfect measure of a person's sense of humor. In fact, I use one story for some of the people I meet, to help me know whether I've met a kindred spirit.

A woman I used to work with, Kelli, told this story about a man she used to work with, John. Whenever John was oncall at work he had to carry the pager. This was Long Before Now, when pagers only beeped or buzzed. Since John absolutely HATED to be woken up by shrill piercing noises, he would set the pager on vibrate, clip it to his dog's collar and go to bed. If work paged him, the pager would buzz, waking up the dog, who would bark, waking up John, who would unclip the pager from the dog's collar and call work to see what the problem was.

I get one of three reactions when I tell this story: 1) They laugh; 2) They say, "Oh;" 3) They get angry and tell me how cruel that is to the dog.

There's no help for it: Person 3 I just avoid like the plague.

I can get along fine with person number 2, but there's no real connection, and the relationship will never advance beyond acquaintance.

Now, it's possible that sometimes I don't tell the story well, and I might get reaction 2 for that reason, but if the person laughs (especially if they laugh again a little later when they picture it again) then I've found a new friend.