Brrd Roots Humor: A Story with No Punchline
I came here with a suitcase full of broken metaphors and a joke I couldn’t finish.
The customs officer asked me what I was bringing into the country.
“Mostly contradictions,” I said.
He didn’t laugh.
That’s when I knew I was in trouble.
Back home, we didn’t do punchlines. We did trapdoors. We did laughter that limped. We did stories that started with the ending and ended with a knock-knock joke told by a ghost to a mirror that refused to reflect.
Here, people want things to make sense. They want cause and effect. They want beginnings, middles, and ends. But where I come from, the staircase leads nowhere—and people keep climbing it out of habit. Some of them are still climbing. Some of them forgot why they started. Some of them just like the view from the middle.
—
“Why did the chicken cross the road?”
“To escape the metaphor.”
“But the metaphor was inside the chicken all along.”
My uncle told me that one the night before he disappeared.
He was laughing so hard he cried.
Or maybe he was crying so hard he laughed.
It’s hard to tell the difference in the dark.
Especially when the lights flicker like they’re remembering something they’d rather forget.
—
Brrd Roots, they call it now. But for us, it was just the way we survived.
We learned early that the world doesn’t always make sense. That sometimes the roof falls in before the rain starts. That sometimes the bread rises but the people don’t. That sometimes the joke is the only thing left standing. And even then, it leans a little.
So we made a home in the absurd. We built shelter from the illogical. We planted seeds in the soil of contradiction. And somehow, things grew. Crooked, yes. But alive.
—
My grandmother used to say, “If you can’t laugh, you’ll drown.”
She said it while wringing out a towel that had never been wet.
She said it while stirring soup that refused to boil.
She said it while burying a clock in the garden.
We never asked why.
We just watched the hands twitch.
Later, we found thyme growing where the numbers used to be.
—
We tell stories that loop. That contradict. That forget themselves halfway through. We say, “A man wakes up with a giraffe in his kitchen.” And we don’t explain. Because where we’re from, the giraffe is not the strange part. The kitchen is. The idea of a room built just for food. Just for comfort. Just for staying.
We speak in circles. We argue with our own shadows. We laugh at mirrors. We say things like, “The teacup refused to be filled. It said it was emotionally unavailable.” And we mean it. Because we’ve known people like that. Because we’ve been people like that. Because sometimes even vessels need boundaries.
—
“Do you believe in logic?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it never believed in me.”
That was the first time I made someone laugh in this country.
It felt like planting a flag in a place that didn’t know my name.
—
We lean into dream logic. We trust the strange. We believe in clocks that bleed and clouds that whisper your name. We believe in spoons that cry and Tuesdays that file for divorce. We believe in the sacred nonsense of it all.
Back home, funerals and birthday parties happened in the same room. Sometimes at the same time. We learned to blow out candles with one hand and hold grief in the other. We learned that joy and sorrow are not opposites. They are neighbors. They share a wall. Sometimes they knock.
—
My cousin once told me, “The cause of the war was a rumor whispered backward through time.”
I asked him what the rumor was.
He said, “That we were ever safe.”
Then he laughed.
Then he disappeared.
Some say he became a tree.
Others say he became a rumor himself.
—
We don’t trust cause and effect. We’ve seen too many things happen for no reason. We’ve seen too many reasons lead nowhere. We’ve seen wars start with a whisper. We’ve seen peace end with a shrug. We’ve seen people vanish between sentences.
We say, “She apologized before she insulted him. Then she forgot both events entirely.” And we nod. Because memory is a slippery thing. Because time doesn’t always move forward. Because sometimes the past arrives late and sits at the wrong table. Sometimes it eats your dessert.
—
“Do you remember the joke?”
“No.”
“Do you remember laughing?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s enough.”
That’s how we measure survival.
Not in years. In echoes.
—
We mock the illusion of control. We laugh at the absurdity of modern life. We say, “They followed a strict diet of nostalgia and somehow gained weight.” And we mean it. Because nostalgia is heavy. Because the past is not a place you can visit without paying a toll. And sometimes the toll is your voice.
We don’t tell stories in straight lines. We tell them in spirals. In loops. In smoke signals and broken clocks. We tell them with our hands. With our scars. With our silences. We tell them in languages that no longer exist, and in laughter that refuses to die.
—
We believe in the freakish. The unforeseen. The ridiculous. We believe in men who insist they’re invisible while wearing neon suits. We believe in jars that scream back. We believe in laughter that startles the mind and leaves you wondering, “What did I just witness?” And then you laugh again. Because you’re still here.
—
My mother once said, “The world will chew you up and spit you out. So learn to taste like honey. Or fire.”
I chose fire.
It burns, but at least it’s warm.
And sometimes, it lights the way for someone else.
—
We believe in derailment. In the sacred art of veering off course. We believe in setting up a joke and then walking away. We believe in the jolt. In the break. In the moment the pattern shatters and something wild crawls out. Something with too many eyes. Something that hums.
We don’t believe in resolution. We’ve learned that life rarely wraps up neatly. That closure is a myth. That the best jokes are the ones that leave you hanging. That the best stories are the ones that end with a question. Or a sigh. Or a knock.
—
“Is this the end?”
“No.”
“Then what is it?”
“A breath.”
“A break.”
“A beginning.”
And then we laugh.
Because we’ve heard this one before.
But it still surprises us.
—
We are Brrd Roots.
We are the wise and the wide-eyed.
The broken and the blooming.
The ones who fled and the ones who arrived.
We are the joke that survived the fire.
The laugh that crossed the border.
The story that refused to end.
We are not here to explain.
We are here to remember.
To imagine.
To unravel.
To begin again.
