The Truth Is Funny Sometimes

A real-estate developer is about to build a monstrous set of apartments in the field at the end of my street. The impression you get on first seeing the drawings for it is that it looks like a prison. All my neighbors are aghast and hate the thing. The plans have been debated back and forth for two years, and about twenty changes have come before the Zoning Board and the Zoning Board of Appeals. The thing was obviously not properly thought out at the beginning. 

Anyway, there was another hearing at the Zoning Board of Appeals last week and I got up and gave a five-minute talk on why I thought the plans had not been properly thought out and why the neighbors hate the thing so much. There were newspaper people there and TV cameras, money-people with neckties and such, developers, and the architects. 

So, I'm giving my short talk and I notice people laughing, as if this were a comedy of some kind. I couldn't figure out why they were laughing, but I went right ahead and said what seemed to be the obvious truth, that the thing hadn't been adequately thought out and was hated by the people who live in the neighborhood. 

No one spoke to me after the speech or after the meeting adjourned, so I walked home from City Hall quite lost and confused. I didn't have a clue as to why they were laughing, or how well I had gotten my two points across. I was a bit upset and decided to go out to a restaurant to have something to eat to think it over. No clue.

But the next morning I get a note from a lady who attended the hearing saying that I had “stolen the show,” that I was right on target, educated, articulate, witty, effective, etc. Later, a couple neighbors said similar words. But I still feel that I don't quite get it. My best guess is that I apparently got at the heart of the problem and articulated it so simply and clearly that it seemed sarcastic, funny, ironic or something like that. I think I was so right, and what I was combating was so clearly wrong, that it seemed comic. Also, what I stated had a lot of life behind it, a lot of thought and experience with the absurdities of society. It also has gone through my mind that somehow my mother's arch irony played into it. 

Anyway, I had the audience's startling and complete attention, and I could see that some of the audience was “with me,” and that there was laughter. But I was just concentrating on what was the obvious, clear truth, and feeling that I will just say the truth regardless of what all the respectables or anyone else might think. I'm still a bit amazed by the reaction, as you can tell, and I still don't quite get why they were laughing. 

What goes through my mind right now is that perhaps people already know the truth about many things, but they are surprized when somebody unexpectedly comes right out and thoroughly says it.