Crickets.

There´ve been quite a few adjustments to make here in Costa Rica: rarely getting a hot shower, living in a very conservative culture, and consuming enough white rice to back up a horse, to name just a few.

But I think the one that´s really starting to get to me is that I just can´t get a damn laugh down here. I know, I´m no Dom Rickles back home, but I at least get a chuckle or two now and then. In Costa Rica, I got nuthin´!

After looking at some of my failed attempts in the past two weeks, I realize there isn´t just one reason why my jokes fall flat here, but rather a number of reasons.

There´s the language barrier and the fact that I simply don´t have a mastery of Spanish just yet. For example, on the morning of Day One (with the family who lived on the farm with the noisy chickens), the señora asked me if we had any problems. I meant to jokingly say ¨Oh, the chickens!¨, which would have been ¨¡Ay, las gallinas!¨ Instead, I used a similar sounding word that I thought meant chickens and said ¨¡Ay, las galletas!¨ TRANSLATION: ¨Oh, the crackers.¨ Except for maybe in the context of this story, ¨Oh, the crackers¨is generally not the best punchline.


And there have definitely been cultural differences that make me less than humorous. Like during our lively New Year´s celebration with the extended family, I told the woman pictured above that one of her brothers, who had been dancing like a maniac and playing the court jester role all night, was crazy. An innocent attempt at levity turned sour quickly. Her face went from jolly to dead serious in a nanosecond and said ¨Crazy?! No. No. He´s not crazy.¨ She even gave me a Dikembe Mutumbo finger wag in my face for emphasis.

And then there´s just inexplicably unfunny material that I would normally expect to kill back home. Just yesterday, we were hanging out at the orphanage with the boys and their sports coordinator, Johhny, watching the Michael Jackson live DVD we bought. MJ pulled off a sick Moonwalk from one side of the stage to the other and I said ¨That´s how Johnny enters the kitchen at home.¨ Absolute crickets. A couple of them looked at me with the dreaded ¨confused dog¨look (head cocked to the side, lip snarled a bit). As I sank down into my chair and quietly watched the rest of ¨Smooth Criminal¨, I made a promise to myself that I wouldn´t give up. And so I vow to you now as I vowed to myself then - I WILL GET A LAUGH IN COSTA RICA.