sisters

Making fun of people is a popular and difficult pastime. It's easy to rip on someone with vulgar words, attacks on masculinity/femininity/promiscuity, or even just by saying the same thing they say in a funny voice.

These, of course, are all bush-league tactics. To get the big laughs, one must be intimately acquainted with their victim, as well as intensely frustrated by something the victim said or did. (Simply retelling a funny story will sometimes lead the teller to start laughing, which ruins a story faster than rain ruins a cookout.)

These are but a few factors involved in proper mockery, but the thesis they support remains the same: If you want to hear something hilarious about somebody else, ask their older sister. (brother will work in a pinch.) Two sisters, one 23 and one 20, work at Perkins with me. The older one does an impression of her little sister borne from many years of irritation and frustration, and the crowning glory is this little snort-laugh-choke noise she makes. It's very quick, and it makes the younger sister sound like a half-tard, complete with lazy eye, thick lips, and coke-bottle glasses. It is also the funniest sound in the world, rendering myself and a co-worker unable to do anything but laugh for a good five minutes. The only problem with this story is that it cannot be shared by anybody but the older sister, as nobody else can make the sound.

Here is an article that lends support to something I've been saying for years. The very existence of a gene like this makes it more likely that there is an analogue in humans that explains a lot about why we are the way we are. There is, however, anecdotal evidence that straight guys occasionally bat for the other team, as it were. Any thoughts?