I know, I know.

What do I know?

Well, this time, it’s that I know I’m silly.

I realize, in retrospect, that I (probably) always was. I like being funny. I tell jokes, either repeating ones I’ve heard, or making up new ones. When people laugh, it encourages me.

Sometimes they say, “Don’t encourage him.”

My students would laugh and groan at the same time. “Your jokes are terrible, but don’t stop telling them.”

I would explain, “I have an Advanced Degree in Silly. I’m doing postgraduate work.”

Responses range from “Ha Ha” to “Huh?”

My Daughter says things like, “Dad, you’re being silly,” and “Why are you so silly?”

I have a quiver of replies, like, “So are you!”

Her riposte, “But not for as long as you.”

My tit-for-tat, “I’ve got better than 20 years of prior experience before you were born.”

“What? You were funny as a baby?”

“Apparently.”

“Is that a parental pun?”

“Could be. I seem to remember people saying that my baby gurgle was a chortle.”

But I don’t think that’s what I wanted to talk about.

If I remember correctly, a few sentences back, I started by musing on “What do I know,” and “silly.”

That’s right, I looked it up, looked back, and there it is/was, “What do I know?…Silly.”

I think I was going to explore the connection between inherent risibility and my now self-acknowledged rebel nature.

Joining the ranks of the Super Heroes, I am the Laughing Rebel.

I challenge The System.

There’s a whole industry of laughter. There are traveling comedians. There are TV Sitcoms. Late night TV. There’s the Comedy Store. There’s Las Vegas.

People pay money to laugh. When they don’t laugh, they heckle, which gets a laugh. It fills an un-met need.

There’s the Joker and the Jokester. There’s the Political Comedian who comes and goes. Right now it’s harvest time for a bumper crop.

We all remember Lenny Bruce, then Mort Saul who funny-graphed the government, and George Carlin who taught us words.

And lingering phrases. “Make ‘em laugh,” “Keep ‘em laughing,” “The funny side of life,” “Laughter is the best medicine.”

When times are tough and things are bad, and “It only hurts when you laugh,” which means we concentrate the pain of life into a laugh, we can “laugh it off.”

Laughter clarifies. “I get it!”

Laughter defangs. You “don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” or “the jokester who makes you laugh.”

Laughing together is like sharing food, and you’re not enemies.

Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, are great educators. They make connections and we see things more clearly. “Aha!”

The frontal assault of daily existence can be supervened by a laugh track.

We should all be wise by now, because we’ve been given so many “words to the wise” that “it’s not even funny,” and “the joke’s on us.”

If school makes us laugh, we don’t cut class.

The laughter muscles give us an internal massage.

The road to peace is paved with good laughs.

Take a bite, lift a glass, share a joke.