I guess a whole book could be written about all the things the nearly 60,000 people connected to MSU did during their time on or away from campus. But that is much too long; I am going to focus on one person’s time, and that person is me.

I thought about a lot of things during winter break: papers to finish for conferences, assignments for spring 2011, reports that needed to be finished and an office that really needed cleaning.
All of those were good productive activities, but there was one I never saw coming. It was the kind of thing one doesn’t understand until someone verbalizes it.

One has to hear the words and the emotion that go with the words. What was so momentous to make me actually sit down and write about a mind-altering revelation? Well, here goes.
I always have been known as a person who is quick to add or inject some humorous barb into a conversation, response or greeting.

I always assume what I am saying is funny or quirky enough to make people laugh. “Is this the best you can do,” coupled with a smile, should be taken for what it is: a joke. It’s funny.

But is it really funny? Maybe. But, maybe it isn’t to the individual pinned to the wall by the hilarious banter. Maybe he or she never enjoyed the constant barrage of “funny” activities.

But none of that matters because you’re “the funny one.”

This dawned on me after giving a donut to an individual who later came by my office — visibly upset — and asked me to stop being obnoxious and disrespecting him.

Wow! I gave him a donut, and this is what I get? It had nothing to do with stupid donuts. It had to do with how the donut was given and how I spoke to him. I only said funny things: How could anyone be upset with that? I was only being funny …

After he left my office, I looked out the window and realized, maybe for the first time, we do many things in our lives that impact others.

They might involve giving our time and money, teaching a great class, offering advice to someone who needs it or any array of activities.

There also are some not-so-nice things we say to others that we think are “nice and funny” but are really just plain awful. This might involve ridiculing the school down the road that our friends attend, picking on someone shorter or taller than we are or using obnoxious names to describe anyone and everything. And it’s all in the name of humor and being “funny.”

I realized I had been upsetting an individual for years under the belief I was being funny. To me, funny meant nice, and friends were meant to be funny.

Perhaps that is why I always have hated the television “comedy” “The Office.” While it is proclaimed to be “funny,” it really isn’t funny.

Its merit is in showing the absolute vicious nature of humor when we fail to understand and truly see what the humor really is doing to the people around us.

If we laugh at Steve Carell and the other “funny” characters, we are losing a giant part of the message: Funny is only funny as long as we know how to control the positive impact it has on the listener.

I think, for this individual, the holiday break has given me a sign that I still can be humorous within limits. Utilizing a part of an old adage, I must “think before I joke.” Can you?

Craig Gunn is a State News guest columnist and director of the communications program in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Reach him at gunn@egr.msu.edu.