Gary shrugged. “I don’t know either,” he said.
His father laughed awkwardly, unsure if that was a joke or not. “Well, your mother and I have talked it over,” he said, “and we’d like to offer a suggestion. We’d like you to try to go the next three weeks without telling any jokes.”
Gary looked at them like they were out of their minds. “I’m going to be in the talent show. I have to make up jokes.”
“We know that,” said his mother. “Just keep them to yourself.”
“First prize is a hundred dollars, right?” asked his father. “We’ll put a hundred dollars in your savings account if you can make it until the talent show without telling anyone a joke.”
Gary laughed. “C’mon,” he said. “My jokes aren’t that bad, are they? Ha. Ha. I’m the first stand-up comic who gets paid for not telling a joke. Ha. Ha.”
“Everything you say is a joke,” said his mother. “It stops being funny after a while.”
“You should want to keep your jokes to yourself anyway,” said his father. “If you tell someone a joke, he’ll tell it to someone else, and pretty soon everyone will know it before you ever get a chance to say it at the talent show.”
Gary laughed again. “I don’t have to worry about that,” he said. “Nobody ever repeats any of my jokes. Ha. Ha.”
“I do,” his father said.
“Really?” asked Gary. “When?”
“Just today,” said his father. “I have a client who likes to fish. So I asked him, ‘Do you know how to keep fish from smelling?’ ”
Gary smiled. “Oh, yeah, that’s a good one,” he said.
; Gary’s father was a stockbroker. He specialized in something called high-yield mutual funds. He’d tried to explain the stock market to Gary, but it bored Gary senseless.
“So?” Gary’s mother asked impatiently. “How do you keep fish from smelling?”
“Cut off their noses,” said Gary’s father.
Gary’s mother cracked up.
“I’ve told you that joke before!” said Gary. “You didn’t laugh when I said it.”
She shrugged. “Sorry. It’s just … I don’t know. Coming from your father …”
“Did your client laugh?” Gary asked his father.
“Yes, as a matter of fact he did.”
“Did he buy lots of stock?”
“No, he didn’t buy any.”
“But if he laughed—”
“One’s got nothing to do with the other,” said his father. “That’s your problem. You seem to think that the way to be successful, or the way to make people like you, is to tell jokes. But people will like you because of who you are, not for the jokes you tell.”
“But that’s who I am,” Gary insisted. “I tell jokes.”
“No, that’s not who you are,” said his mother. “You tell jokes because you’re afraid to let people see who you are. You hide behind a wall of jokes.”
“Not a very strong wall,” said Gary. “It won’t hold up a house. Ha. Ha.”
“When you were little,” his mother said, “and we’d have company over, everyone would always ask you to tell jokes because you knew so many.”