There’s an old joke that goes something like this:
A man walks into a pub. It’s in the middle of nowhere and full of local folk. He orders his drink and sits next to the bar. There’s a lot of general chatter taking place among the locals. Suddenly one man stands up and shouts “Forty two!” The whole pub erupts in laughter. The stranger is confused. A short while later another man yells out “Sixty seven!” and again there is a riotous reaction. By now the stranger is intrigued and asks the man next to him what’s going on. “It’s quite simple” he explains. “We’ve all been coming here for years, and we’ve all told every joke that we know many times. So we decided just to give each joke a number, and now we just shout out the number and the rest of us remember the joke.”
The stranger is fascinated and asks if he can have a go, to which his new friend readily agrees. He plucks up his courage and shouts out “Twenty seven!!” Deathly silence. You can hear the wind from the moors howling through the creaky window frames of the old pub. Dejected the man returns to his drink. Just then one of the regulars stands up and yells “Twenty seven!” and receives the loudest reaction of the night.
The stranger is now very frustrated and turns to his companion and says “I don’t get it. He shouted the same number as I did, but they didn’t laugh at all for me.” The friendly local puts a consoling arm around the stranger and says “Ah, but it’s the way you tell ’em”.
Whether we are writing blogs or telling jokes, we are practising the art of story-telling. And just like the man said in this tale, how well people relate to our message is determined by our audience’s perception of how we tell the story. If we can create a feeling of anticipation, of people caring what comes next, of identfying personally with elements of the story, then our message carries so much more power, whatever the subject.
I remember vividly an evening in a modest quarter of Bucharest in a family garden. There must have been around 20 people there, including 3 of us Brits. As the alcohol flowed and the stories got more boisterous, one man seemed to sparkle as the comedian and storyteller. I could make out no more than half of what he was saying; enough to get the gist, but not enough to understand the fine nuances of his stories. From our limited vocabulary it was clear that the jokes were getting blue, and when he asked us for a contribution we had a discussion and agreed on a joke that I certainly won’t repeat here.
Between us we quietly and laboriously told him our joke in broken Romanian, no doubt murdering the punchline in the process. He paused at the end of our effort, thought for a moment and then stood up and began to deliver our joke to the expectant audience. It was an unforgettable moment, and this guy showed a talent that should have made him a good living as a comedian. He wove his own jokes into the story, adding wild gestures and hilarious facial expressions, and long before he reached the punchline we were all in hysterics; more at his superb rendition of our story than at the decidedly average quality of the punchline. He had us spellbound, and we didn’t even understand half of what he was saying!
He demonstrated to me that a great storyteller can shine out even when an audience doesn’t understand every word. Storytelling isn’t about getting every fact lined up in the right order, or about ensuring that you have the perfect structure to your yarn. Instead we are more likely to judge a good story by how we perceive the messenger than by the words we read or hear.
“Thirty eight!”
the power of anticipation.. I love this post! next time I tell a story, I’ll make sure I really “tell the story”! great post 🙂
An interesting topic. There are diffent kinds of these storytellers. 1. People who make others sway to their hysterics, 2. Guys who never bother to see how bored the audience is3. people who just can’t stop once they start off. But we bloggers get more to write with such diversity around:)
When I started reading this article and saw the joke I started laughing. Not because I knew the jokes with the numbers mentioned by you, but because I knew this joke (a famous one among Romanians too:) ). Yes, I am from Romania 🙂 Now, going further – for I’m in PR – I might add that some people have a great charisma: they catch and retain the attention of a full room simply by being natural, not by doing anything special. Some work very hard and manage to get half way: catch the attention of some and not for the whole presentation. In Romania we have an actor, named Florin Piersic, pretty famous for his art or story telling: you can watch him for hours and hours and still you would watch him some more.
Thanks to all for the comments and stories (would love to be able to repeat the joke to you Lori, but my Romanian has fallen into disuse after all these years. I’ll have to get back there and pick it up again).
Very true Mr. Lama. We have an endless supply of material to write about. Keep up the good work!
Well, it’s more or less the same, except that the action takes place at a psychiatric facility, and the visitor sayss: “104!”, then all the patients jump on him and give him a beating next to death. After he wakes up from the beating, the guy asks the manager (who had witnessed the entire scene): “What was that for?!?” “Well, you know…”, says the manager, “100 is the beginning of the jokes with insane people…”
Circumstances have me thinking about storytelling a lot lately — it’s at the front of my mind. Yes, the story needs a good telling, 27 in the hands of a deadpan storyteller is a mere 3, at best, a 0 at worst. But the words chose to tell the story are part and parcel of your perception of the teller, no? Especially on the web — we have short attention spans and are disinclined to read. I suppose we could tell our stories via video — that would be a tough test, eh? — but as long as we write we have to tell them well with words, not just body language.
Thanks for feeding my brain today.
Ave, one of the best parts of learning languages and cultures is encountering the different ideas of humour in each language. I must admit I find Polish jokes very hard to get, while I know that the English sense of humour doesn’t travel very well at all.
Pam, the idea of telling a joke via video would fill me with dread! But you’re right, it’s hard to convey a joke in writing as we miss out on all the accompanying body language which enriches the verbal story.
Thanks both for sharing your thoughts.