Haha point

I'm no comic. I'm well aware of the fact that, my frequent attempts to the contrary, I will never be the next big thing in the world of comedic writing.

But I am a foreigner. And an English teacher. And that, as it turns out, is all you need to be qualified to judge an English language joke competition in Kaohsiung!

It was brilliant. After a week of others wondering what sort of horrible butchering of jokes I'd gotten myself into, I found instead a group of marvelous performers who, for the most part, could tell a decent joke!

One of my favorite moments from the evening:

The first performer stands up and begins to speak. In a near flawless British accent! I must say, it actually threw me off for a bit, considering that one of the things I was evaluating was pronunciation, and I'm just not well-versed enough in British accents to know if some of the words he said were said wrong, or said in a British accent. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, and he did a great job with his anecdotal joke of bad husband "Bobby" (easily the most British-pronounced word in the whole bit) who forgets his wedding anniversary. His wife says "When I wake up tomorrow morning, there better be a gift sitting in the driveway that can go from 0 to 200 in 6 seconds." And what does she find the next morning? A bathroom scale. And, as the young comedian went on to note, Bobby had not been heard from since.

For that little gem, he got third place.

The remainder of the (actually pretty short) evening consisted of some hilarious voices, some wonderfully physical comedy, some great comedic timing--and yes, a little nervousness and a few mispronounced words, but generally just great performance after great performance after great performance.

And they did come right on like that: one after the other, many lasting no more than about 45 seconds, and the next person ascending the stage long before I'd finished scoring the person before, let alone making the more detailed notes I was supposed to give each team. I wrote like mad, but even so, when the time came to give notes, I found myself with a gaping hole where my notes for Team 6 should be.

"That's okay," I thought. "I'm sure they'll come up one group at a time for feedback, and when I see who it is I'll remember what I was going to say."

Then the other judge, a professor at NKNU, stood up to say a few words.

"Great!" I thought. "She'll jog my memory and I can go from there."

Then she sat down, having given no more than a few sentences, and all in Chinese. Wait, she isn't giving individual feedback? My turn? Gulp.

I managed something, though, and then the results were tallied, awarding my faux-British friend third, a girl with absolutely flawless English and a pretty good joke to boot in second, and a group of three with a high production quality and even higher energy levels scoring the top spot with their simple, yet well-executed sketch about a tourist and an old man's dog.

And me? Well, I got a doctorate, apparently. No, really:

Easiest 4 years of my life!

Yes, that certificate is thanking me, Professor Rebekah (and I finally learned to doctor pictures for privacy's sake, woo!) for serving as a judge. I like the looks of that! What's better, it reminds me of a favorite college professor of mine who refused to let us call her "doctor" because she technically didn't have her doctorate. Having now been on the receiving end, I say, why not? It's a great thing to be artificially honored!

So no, I'm still not a humor writer. But now, with a full 40 minutes of experience now behind me, I am apparently a full Professor of Comedy! How very appropriate that my title also be a joke...