These Rules Are No Joke

I love telling a good joke. My timing and execution were perfected in an unlikely spot: the rear of my high school band bus, the only (flute-playing) girl among a gaggle of all-male horn players. That adolescent boot camp was a prelude to impromptu college joke-a-thons, followed by decades of coworkers pleading, “Tell that joke!.” I’m pretty confident I could manage a well-rehearsed 10-minute stand-up set (if the crowd were sufficiently inebriated). But my comic skills (and daydreams) have limits.