You Can't Be Serious.

Life is a lot funnier than we realize, and we're safer for it. We know when to duck.

“From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere,” Dr. Seuss

If it wasn’t for humor, we’d all be dead. I don’t mean we’d die immediately. It might take many years. We could go through adolescence, puberty — even eight seasons of Dancing With the Stars — without feeling a thing. But eventually we’d die, or at least give up watching television.

Like it or not, laughter saves us from self-destruction. Look at the dinosaurs. Everyone thinks they died from meteors hitting the earth. What killed them was seriousness. Dinosaurs were very serious creatures. When they wandered into a tar pit, they couldn’t just say, “Hey, I stepped in some tar.” No, they had to kill the tar pit. They thrashed around until they drowned. To this day, archeologists are finding preserved dinosaurs that look really pissed off.

In fact, we do so many hilarious things, we’re usually bent over laughing when the wrecking ball whizzes past our heads.

Other animals became extinct by being overly confident. Dodos, for instance, stopped flying because they had no predators. Then sailors came along, hit them over the head, and made meals out of them. That’s what happens when you overestimate your security. You become a drumstick.

Fortunately, we’re at the top of the evolutionary totem pole for a reason. We know enough to do stupid things instead of dangerous ones. In fact, we do so many hilarious things, we’re usually bent over laughing when the wrecking ball whizzes past our heads. This is called survival of the fittest.

Half the time, we don’t even know we’re hilarious. We go about our daily lives, pulling one silly stunt after another. If someone told us it’s keeping us alive, we’d laugh in their faces. Yet it’s our goofiness that helps us avoid tar pits and club-swinging sailors. We learn from humor when to duck.

Ducking is a big part of who we are. Either we duck and survive, or don’t duck and suffer the consequences. Ducking and diving is a big part of our everyday lives, and people do some pretty interesting ducking and diving.

This attracted so much attention, bathroom tissue giant, Charmin, offered a year’s if the woman would squeeze her cheeks till she got home.

Take the case of a public school in Callander, Ontario that recently banned cartwheels. “The activity can cause concussions, and neck and wrist injuries,” said Todd Gribbon, principal at M. T. Davidson. This followed the banning of all balls at a Toronto school after a parent was hit and suffered a concussion.

No word yet on whether these schools will ban football.

Then there’s the case of Colorado’s “Mad Pooper,” a jogger who’s made it a regular habit of voiding on a neighbour’s lawn. This attracted so much attention, bathroom tissue giant, Charmin, offered a year’s supply if the woman would squeeze her cheeks till she got home.

So far, the woman hasn’t taken the bait, but Charmin developed quite a following by tweeting: “We’ll do what it takes to wipe away this messy situation.” Another tweeter responded by saying: “Nice way to hop that viral train but didn’t your parents teach you not to reward bad behavior?”

And who can forget Dana Snay, who went on Twitter after her father won his court case against Gulliver Prep, a prestigious school in Miami. He was headmaster, and wanted to retire at 69. They wanted him out at 62. The courts sided with Patrick Snay, awarding him $80,000 plus legal costs. Stipulation? Don’t discuss the case. What did Dana do? She posted: “Gulliver is now officially paying for my vacation to Europe this summer. SUCK IT.”

The court case was reversed and Patrick lost the money and essentially his job. Teenagers, huh? Can’t live with them, can’t send them to North Korea.

When Mark Twain said, “Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing,” he wasn’t kidding. Think of all the havoc we’d create being serious all the time. Can you imagine if Dana hadn’t ruined her father’s career? He might have had a heart attack instead. Now he’s sunning in the backyard.

Banning cartwheels makes sense, too. We really need to clean up dangerous activities at school. And once schools realize curriculums cause stigmatizing and daily boredom, hopefully, they’ll ban those, too.

Now Charmin’s the name on everybody’s butts and the company is couponing like crazy.

We also need to send a big shout out to Charmin. After tweeting their one-year toilet paper offer to the “Mad Pooper,” they capitalized even further with a commercial of five swaying bear butts, done to a clever jingle with the memorable line: “My heinie’s so Charmin shiny.” Now Charmin’s the name on everybody’s butts and the company is couponing like crazy.

Hunter S. Thompson once called life: “Falling down a mine shaft into a blue lagoon.” For all our pratfalls and nonsense tweeting, we’re still here with our limbs intact.

In fact, it’s because we screw up that we survive. That’s our blessing. The day we say “No more mistakes” is the day a piano will fall on our heads. It’s inevitable. Otherwise, we’d all live too long and void ourselves on someone’s lawn. This is called life’s balance. It stops us from baring our asses in public.

I received a note from a mental health nurse, saying that every day she sees tragedy, sadness and hopeless in the eyes of her patients. “We would not be able to do our jobs to the best of our abilities,” she said, “without the coping mechanisms that humour provides us with on a daily basis.”

That pretty much says it all.

This November, I’ll be doing a writer’s workshop/retreat at Clonmel Castle in Port Dover, Ontario (Canada). It runs from the 20th to the 24th, dealing with the subject of humour, called: “Humour Is Just Goofy Reasoning.”

Clonmel Castle is a beautiful, 90-year-old Georgian Revival mansion, located just outside Port Dover. If you’d like to attend this workshop/retreat, contact the owner, Lynneee Steffler for all the details at: clonmelcastle@gmail.com or call: 1–866–500–4938. This is open to writers of all skill levels.

Robert Cormack is a novelist, children’s book author and blogger. His first novel “You Can Lead a Horse to Water (But You Can’t Make It Scuba Dive)” is available online and at most major bookstores. Check out Yucca Publishing or Skyhorse Press for more details.