When you and your spouse have different senses of humor

Terry and I have many things in common, but we also differ in enough ways to make life interesting.

Take, for example, what each of us finds funny. Again, there is some overlap, but overall, our individual senses of humor are markedly different.

WHAT MAKES ME LAUGH: British comedy, the Airplane! move series, standup comedians who make you work a little to get the joke, puns, and the broad genre of dad jokes.

WHAT MAKES TERRY LAUGH: Any time I hit my head on something.

As far as I can tell, nothing in this world is funnier to my wife than when I experience some sort of misfortune, particularly physical misfortune that results in near-injury.

She will tell you it's not so much the actual act of me, say, bumping my skull on something, but rather the way I react to it.

All I know is there is an undeniable link between my pain and her amusement.

If we could somehow find a movie that combines Monty Python-style humor with a man randomly popping up and whacking me over the head with a stick, it would be the perfect date night for us.

"Dad, you're an orphan now"

That's my father holding newborn Jared, August 1998.

We share what could be described as a dark sense of humor in my family.

There are many examples of this, but one of the funniest happened last summer on the day my mother passed away.

That sounds terrible, but it's true. When we got word that she was gone, there were the initial tears and hugs and sharing of memories. And then my daughter Chloe informed me that, as of that moment, I was officially an orphan.

I laughed at that. Hard. Something about the use of the old-fashioned word "orphan" juxtaposed with the situation just made it funny.

That, I guess, is how we sometimes deal with painful realities: We turn them into somewhat-less-than-polite jokes.

I bring this up because today would have been my dad's 92nd birthday. I inherited my sense of humor largely from him, and I think he would have found the orphan comment funny.

When someone would ask him whether a certain person had died, he would almost always reply, "Well, I hope so, or else they played a hell of a joke on her when they buried her."

If asked how someone died, he would invariably tilt his head to one side, close his eyes, and say, "Like this."

I'm busting up just thinking about it.

Dad has been gone for nearly 22 years, but his legacy of inappropriate remarks and ill-timed humor lives on in his children and grandchildren.

He would be proud to know that.

I don't know if you and I have the same sense of humor, but I can't tell you how much I enjoy these videos

There are things that make me laugh to the point of tears that my wife does not find the least bit funny. Like, not even a little bit.

I imagine this might be one of those things, but I derive immeasurable happiness from a series of Facebook clips called "The Same Video of the Same Guys Dancing to a Different Song Every Day." It is exactly what that title suggests.

What you see in every one of these videos is a few older gentlemen doing a kind of folk dance shuffle with a fiddle band in the background. But what you hear varies from video to video.

They take the footage of these same guys dancing and lay over top of it a different rock, rap, or pop song each time.

And it's always perfect.

Here's the very first one they did nearly 10 years ago:

A few things to note here:

• There is a community of Facebookers who comment on all of these videos. They have named each of the main characters, from "Skinny Santa" (the first guy you see dancing) to "Colonel Mustard" (guy in the mustard-colored shirt) to "Maroon Cowboy" (guy in the left background).
• The best moment of every one of these videos, almost without exception, is Colonel Mustard's enthusiastic entrance 30 seconds in. The creators of the videos always time it so that he comes onscreen just as the music crescendos or gets to a chorus. It's so perfect every time, and I laugh every time. Every. Time.
• Occasionally Lady Fiddle Player in the band will get credit because her fiddling matches so well with that day's song. She deserves more recognition.

Here's another one, this time set to Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off":

My love for these videos knows no bounds. Incidentally, here's the original footage from which this is all taken, with the original music and background noise:

To browse through the full catalog of these masterpieces, you have to use the Facebook link above in the second paragraph, as that's where they're mainly posted.

Terry is probably rolling her eyes as she reads this. Maybe you are, too. I, meanwhile, am soaking in the happiness that only comes from watching one of these. Thank you, Skinny Santa and the crew!