Last night as I was drifting into sleep, I heard this exchange between Kyle Mann and Ethan Nicolle on the Babylon Bee podcast during their “Weird News” segment:
Mann: “Libertarian presidential nominee Jo Jorgenson bitten by a bat. So now we’re in a timeline where the libertarian candidate has been bitten by a bat. And it’s not the weirdest thing that has happened to the libertarian candidate, so…”
Nicolle: “Did she sit on the bat? Did the bat dive-bomb her? Did she actually reach into a bat cave trying to get out some jewels or something? You want context if you get bitten by a bat.”
Mann: “Studies have shown that 92% of bat bites are when you stick your hand into a bat cave to get jewels.”
Nicolle: “I once found a bat crawling around in our basement, so I tried to revive it. I wore leather gloves and it kept trying to bite me and it made crazy noises. So I thought I’d revived it…and I took it out back and I said ‘be free, little bat!’ and I…threw it in the air and it just went…splud and it just hit the ground because it couldn’t fly at all because I think it had a broken wing. So I tried. It died.”
Mann: “Did you get the rifle and…”
Nicolle: “Sledgehammer.”
I highlight that exchange because I know Nicolle also writes the webcomic Axe Cop. And while I haven’t read the comic, I can tell after hearing Nicolle over time and from the title itself, it’s got to be a bit twisted. And it reminds me that a lot of the funniest people on the planet are also the smartest and most creative. While some may use their genius to discover the cure for cancer or perpetual clean energy, others use it to comment on the absurdity of life. It’s just the way we’re programmed: we might all be geniuses, but how that genius shows is different in everyone.
In many cases, we measure genius by some kind of contribution to society. Albert Einstein was a genius. Steve Jobs was a genius. Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg? Yeah. Better than the average I’m sure.
But there are probably a lot more geniuses out there who haven’t given us anything to speak of. They may be perfectly content with hiding in a cabin in the woods and not communicating with society at all…and maybe that is their genius. I mean, in this day and age it’s not far removed from not being on Facebook or Twitter, is it? But then again, Ted Kaczynski hid in the woods. He was a Harvard-educated mathematician and many consider him a genius. He did communicate with society though. Unfortunately, he did it with bombs and a 35,000-word manifesto.
But there’s a reason I’m writing this, and it goes back to my introduction. I think everyone’s got something in them, and there are a lot of people whose genius manifests in the ability to say something that may seem twisted, but is absolutely hilarious. I mean, in hardly missing a beat, Nicolle’s “Sledgehammer” comment absolutely nails it. Of course, it’s an acquired taste, but c’mon – who comes up with that in the course of a normal conversation? Geniuses do.
I’ve had the pleasure of knowing a few people of this type. My brother’s best friend from high school had this intelligent, twisted way of looking at the world sometimes. My best friend of 40+ years, Dan Fischer, has the perfect comedic taste and timing. He could always hold an audience to rapt attention with a hilarious joke while I know without fail that if I were to tell the exact same joke I would feel that same audience slipping away before I was halfway through.
My favorite line out of Dan was at a dinner for parents of graduates from our high school. Dan and I raided his closet before the dinner and found every mismatched piece of clothing we could. His mother remembers us walking in to this day. Plaid pants. Striped shirts. Boots. Anyway, one of the parents at our table had a few drinks in him when he started to tell us the story of Klondike Montoose and the minor league baseball Alaskan Alouettes. I remember his somewhat slurred claim that “when these guys played, they were intense!” to which Dan immediately replied, “Oh, they didn’t have a stadium?”
Think about it. He was that quick. And who comes up with that kind of stuff? Geniuses.
I’m of the mind that everyone has something like this that makes them special. Yeah, they may not be billionaires or can rattle off a perfect punch line, but if you pay attention you might be surprised. I like wandering the Korean countryside finding obscure gems tucked away in out-of-the-way corners. Perhaps the same can be said of people. If you take the time, you’ll find the gems in them too.