First Posted: 3/24/2015
Editor’s note: This Optimist column first appeared in the March 29, 2009 edition of the Sunday Dispatch. It has been edited for space.
Wanna know how young my students at the community college are? Get this: they don’t know Jack Benny. Never heard of him.
And there I was Friday afternoon about to tell them how media historians consider the funniest moment in radio nearly a minute of dead silence on the “Jack Benny Show.” Clearly, it was not going to be easy.
Before I could even get to that, I needed to provide background on Jack Benny.
“You’ve heard of Johnny Carson?” I asked. Most of them nodded but I think it was out of courtesy. “Well, Johnny Carson often said he patterned his delivery after Jack Benny. He said Jack Benny had perfect comic timing.”
Blank expressions were all I saw. Still, I pressed on.
To further explain Jack Benny, I realized I needed to teach them a word.
“Anybody ever heard of the word ‘schtick’?” I asked.
No one.
“It’s Yiddish,” I explained. “It means a routine a comedian might use, a running gag. Like … like Rodney Dangerfield’s ‘I don’t get no respect.’”
They did know Rodney Dangerfield.
“Well,” I said, “Jack Benny’s schtick was that he was cheap. He didn’t want to part with a dime.” Knowing this is crucial to the joke, I stressed.
I then went on to explain the funniest moment in radio.
Jack Benny is walking down the street. You can hear his heals clicking on the sidewalk. Suddenly there’s a rough, thug-like voice. “This is a stick up. Your money or your life.”
Then, nothing but silence. Almost a minute of it.
Exasperated, the thug barks, “Hey, Bud, I said ‘Your money or your life.’”
To which Jack responds, “I’m thinking it over.”
That’s hilarious.
To me.
The students just looked bored. To them, funny on the radio is Howard Stern. Howard Stern’s schtick is looking at women’s breasts. His comic line is “Are they real?” He says it in every show. It wasn’t funny the 1,000th time.
To me.
To them, he’s a riot.
I had another Jack Benny routine for them. But first I had to explain about Jack Benny and his violin. He could actually play, I said, but his schtick was that he played horribly. When he played, babies would cry, dogs would howl, people would run. Again, knowing this is crucial to the joke.
Here it is:
Jack Benny walks to up to the doors of the White House carrying a violin case. The Secret Service guy stops him and demands, “What’s in the case?”
“A machine gun,” Jack Benny answers.
“Go on in,” the Secret Service guy says. “I was afraid it was a violin.”
The students didn’t exactly roll out of their seats at that one, but some did chuckle.
It’s times like these that teachers wonder if they are still relevant. Or has the gap gotten too wide to bridge?
In certain areas — like the history of radio, or comedy — it probably has, but in others, my students and I are clearly on the same page. Often this involves matters of the heart. Or more specifically, the broken heart.
Students bring their broken hearts to me all the time. They show up at my office door seeking counsel and comfort. I try my best to provide both but I really wish I had the magic to make their pain go away. Or better yet, a crystal ball to show them how everything will work out just fine.
But having been there myself, more than once, I know there’s almost nothing I can say to make them feel better. So, mostly I just listen.
What I will not do is throw clichés at them — “You’ve got to take it one day at a time” — or insult them by not taking their pain seriously — “If this is the worst thing that happens to you, you’re lucky.”
I do have a bit of advice and, ironically, it comes from a guy on the radio. When I was experiencing the worst broken heart of my life, I got helpful advice from, of all people, the host of a sports radio show. His name is Papa Joe Chevalier. I can’t recall the details, but a fan called in saying he was heartbroken that his favorite player had been traded away from his favorite team. He was crushed.
“It hurts, doesn’t it?” Papa Joe asked, and then added without waiting for a response: “And guess what? All you can do is let it hurt until it stops hurting.”
That’s brilliant. It isn’t good news but it is good advice.
Sometimes, all you can do is let it hurt until it stops hurting. No matter how bad the pain, eventually it stops hurting.
That’s a lesson I share with every student with a broken heart.
When all is said and done, it’s much more valuable than knowing Jack Benny.
