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We both lived by a weird code: Mavis and 10 friends’ utter lack of interest in something 5
I might be friends on Saturday afternoon, but I loved so much. I had always known, yeah,
Friday nights and weekend sleepovers were maybe JLMP wouldn’t be as interested in com-
for JLMP. If it sounds weird and compartmen- edy as Mavis had been, but it scared me that section one
talized, that’s because it was. But I was used to they dismissed it so completely. I felt like two
compartmentalization. My entire teenage life different people. /
was a highly organized map of activities: twenty What happened to me was something that
minutes to shower and get ready for school, I think happens to a lot of professional comedy
five-minute breakfast, forty-five-minute Latin writers or comedians, or really anyone who’s Mindy Kaling
class to thirty-minute lunch to forty-five- passionate about anything and discovering it for
minute jazz band rehearsal, etc. Compartmen- the first time. Most people who do what I do are
talizing friendships did not feel different to obsessed with comedy, especially during ado-
me. Mavis and I would say “hi” in the hallways, lescence. I think we all have that moment when
and we would nod at each other. Occasionally our non-comedy-obsessed friends or family are
we would sit next to each other in study hall. like: “Nope. I’m at my limit. I can’t talk about
But Mavis did not fit into my life as my school In Living Color anymore. It’s kind of funny, but
friend. come on.”
Then things started to change.
One Saturday night, I had JLMP over my
house. They wanted to watch Sleeping with the
Enemy, you know, the movie where Julia Roberts
fakes her own death to avoid being married to
her psycho husband? And I wanted to watch
Monty Python’s Flying Circus and show them
the Ministry of Silly Walks, one of their funniest
and most famous sketches. Mavis and I had
watched it earlier that day several times in a row,
trying to imitate the walks ourselves. I played it
for them. No one laughed. Lauren said: “I don’t
get it.” I played it again. Still no response to it.
I couldn’t believe it. The very same sketch that
had made Mavis and me clutch our chests in
diaphragm-hurting laughter had rendered my
best friends bored and silent. I made the classic
mistake of trying to explain why it was so funny, Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy
as though a great explanation would be the key
to eliciting a huge laugh from them. Eventually
Polly said, gently, “I guess it’s funny in a random As Kaling found out when she showed JLMP the
kind of way.” Monty Python comedy sketch “The Ministry of
Within the hour we were watching Julia Silly Walks,” what’s funny to some people isn’t
Roberts flushing her wedding ring down always funny to others.
the toilet and starting a new life in Iowa Based on this image, what is intended to be
under an assumed identity. I could barely funny in this sketch? Do you find it funny?
Why or why not?
enjoy the movie, still stunned by my closest
Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample. 151
Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.

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