This Film Changed My Life

You think I'm either demented or joking, but I'm dead-pan serious.

I saw this film during its brief theatrical release and laughed my head off. I just happened to see it while on a date with a young woman of whom I thought rather highly. We had known each other for a few years and had been dating for nearly six months, and we were both of the opinion that we would likely be getting engaged very soon, should things continue on the way they were going. She was very good looking, very intelligent, of unassailable virtue, and of a good family (Yes, I'm being a little tongue-in-cheek here, but this is a Victorian-era movie were talking about).

I laugh my way through this entire film, and she sits there like a rock. She doesn't laugh. She doesn't giggle. She doesn't even crack a smile. She actually seems annoyed that I am laughing so much. Afterward, I ask how she liked the film, and she says she doesn't think it was all that funny. I then realize that, normal as she seems to be, she is almost entirely devoid of a sense of humor. I quickly pick up that the small chuckles she exhibits whenever I wax humorous are merely out of politeness. She finally admits to me a week later that she doesn't care for my sense of humor, and can't tell me a single joke she ever found funny. She could have told me she had taken a lifetime vow of celibacy and I probably would have kept dating her a little longer, just to see if she was joking. But as far as I was concerned, no funny, no honey.

Just to prove there is someone for everyone, she married about the stiffest guy I had ever personally met. He later became a Secret Service agent. I'm not kidding about this. He was that stiff. They produced a son who, I've been told, is always the class clown. Go figure.

I found a copy of this movie many years later at a garage sale, and watched it with my wife that evening. She darn near laughed her @$$ off.

I wonder what I would have done if she hadn't found it funny.