Why is it difficult to tell a joke to senior citizens?

Why is it difficult to tell a joke to senior citizens?

Many speakers, lecturers and leaders find it difficult to tell a joke to senior citizens. They want to utilise their time and opportunity to fullest by interspersing their talk with jokes. The idea is to break the boredom of a heavy or serious topic, draw attention of the audience back from sleeping and to ensure better audience engagement. However, senior citizens as a group are a difficult one to tackle. Jokes do not cut ice with them easily. Why so?

 We may think of several reasons. One is that they have attended lot of meetings and might have already heard the joke in some form or the other. Many seniors are hard of hearing and cannot catch the joke quickly, if the speaker is not careful. Most of the elderly population have gone through a lot of trials and tribulations – they have no zest in living and have ‘given up’ laughing altogether; they have, like they say about frozen shoulders, frozen faces. They simply cannot laugh even if they try to and even when they know that laughing is easier than other facial poses.

 Another aspect contributing to lesser appreciation of humour among the elderly population is that their cognitive functions decline and are unable ‘understand’ a joke. The joke may be situational, language-oriented or culture or community dependent.  Placing oneself in the required context in which the joke is told is necessary to value a joke. This is difficult for seniors in a mixed, heterogenous groups.   

 The speaker may not be adept in saying or sharing jokes. He may start off with a warning: “Let me tell you a joke”. He wants to ensure clapping when he pauses after telling the joke but makes an unintended pause midway and some persons start clapping, without understanding the situation and others join him spontaneously.  Other speakers may make a mess of it by narrating a joke monotonously almost in soporific manner. Even well delivered jokes cannot wake up people who start sleeping when jokes are told.  Some speakers start dissecting their own jokes with great analytical skills that the real charm of the joke vanishes. And the elderly participants are too sensitive to tolerate inept speakers.

 Some of the assumptions I have made in this write-up may be wrong. If you really care to dig deeper, read: G Greengross – Humour and Aging IN Gerontology Vol 59 Issue 5 August 2013 https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/351005

 My purpose is  just to stir your interest  on this topic of humour and the elderly!

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Image taken from pexels.com

Pandemic and Random Words

Pandemic and Random Words

I generated some random words and searched Google to find out what connection could be there between PANDEMIC and the random word. Here are some ten words / phrases that I tried.

 1.      People get wild varied bizarre dreams due to stress because of pandemic

2.      Special music sessions are arranged to entertain people during pandemic

3.      Libraries in the USA have seen phenomenal increase in e-lending of books

4.      Advising men to abstain from sex during pandemic has not gone well with them

5.      Giving alms has increased many fold

6.      Getting hands dirty with mud increases chances of covid19

7.      Adoption of Children in India suffered because of Pandemic

8.      Volunteers went about giving walking canes to seniors during pandemic

9.      Eating ice cream was avoided by most people

10.  Shaving proved to be helpful to contain spread

My guess that “ almost anything you may think of has links to pandemic”, is borne out to be true. In this sense covid19 is omni-everything! So Covid19 created pandemic is GOD. People reach out to GOD in times of stress or sadness. They realize that money is not everything.  We now know that death can strike us anytime and life has no guarantee. Like, time that is a continuum, the fear instilled by the pandemic may never leave us. It may leave us – paralyzed for ever till we meet our maker. What later? Who knows? Why know it? 

Picture credit: Karolina Grabowska from pexels.com

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84 year old Japanese develops a gaming App for seniors

  Masako Wakamiya is 84 years old. She bought a laptop when she was 58. Got hooked on to it.

She kept enthusing the senior citizens to use computers and the smartphone by offering classes. When she found that thee were not any games for seniors she learnt coding at 81 and developed her own games Apps!. One is based on a traditional Japanese festival that is thousand years old. The beauty is that all old people can easily relate to this easily. Watch her say success story here:

 

 I thank Justice Rangarajan for sending me links to similar Apps developed for some traditional games like Aadupuli,  Pallangizhi etc by our Indian folk.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.devunne.pallanguzhi&hl=en_IN 

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.devunne.aadupuli&hl=en_IN