Everyone has their own idea of what’s funny. There’s something about the way we were brought up that affects a person’s sense of humor.

My dad, for example, had a quick sense of humor. He could find a chuckle in almost anything. Mother was just the opposite; she wanted to know what the joke was about, and why anyone might think this was funny.

I’m somewhere between – I see humor everywhere, but I have no idea why one thing is funny and something else isn’t.

The funniest person I ever knew was a sheep rancher named Theo. Theo was an architect by training, but he made enough money designing buildings that he could afford to raise sheep in his later years. His sense of humor was so dry you could cure hay with it.

I remember one time at a sheep producers’ field day, Theo was demonstrating the practice of crutching ewes. Crutching involves shearing around the ewe’s hind legs and udder to make the udder more accessible to the lambs.

This practice is performed close to lambing time and helps the lambs figure out where their first meal is coming from. Crutching also makes things a lot cleaner if the ewe needs assistance during lambing.

Theo had a ewe sitting up and was shearing around the hind legs and the two nipples of the udder when a woman in the crowd asked, “What if you cut one of those off?”

Theo grimaced slightly. Then, without looking up he said, “I don’t even want to think about it. That’s a bad practice.”

In another instance, Theo accepted the task of building sheep and goat pens for the county fair. We had plenty of pens for sheep, but a sudden influx of 15 or 20 goats had everyone in a tizzy about where to put them; some wanted to put them in pens built for
sheep. Others said, “You can’t pen a goat like you would a sheep. They’ll jump right out!”

I should explain that goat raisers insist these animals are easy to confine. But every time I see a goat standing on top of a school bus, I feel a twinge of doubt. Theo was the same way; he figured there’s a big difference between penning a sheep and incarcerating a goat.

He sat quietly, drawing on his notepad and calculating available space while the debate raged about how many goats were actually coming to the fair, and how many would fit into each pen. The goat people were pleading for more space, but sheep exhibitors were standing firm.

Finally, amid all this debate, Theo looked up from his drawings. “I think we should put all of the goats in the same pen,” he said. “I think they have a better time that way.”

Readers with questions or comments for Roger Pond may write to him in care of this publication.