Class Clown brightens peers’ days

“Wanna hear a joke? It’s clean, I promise. All right, what do you call a twitchy cow?” junior Anshul Aggarwal readies himself for the punchline and exclaims, “Beef jerky!”

Aggarwal is the kid who walks into a room with a smile plastered on his face at all times; he is the guy who works to make everyone around him laugh as hard as possible. In short, Aggarwal is a class clown. 

“I tell jokes because it’s a way to brighten people’s days,” he said. “It’s the best feeling in the world when you make that one person’s day just a little bit better.”

But making one person smile is easy compared to cracking up a bigger group, he said.

“There’s always a chance a joke will fall flat on its face while you’re running it, or that what you may find funny, no one else does,” Aggarwal said.

Aggarwal remembers the time when one of his jokes, which required knowledge of photons to understand, failed miserably among some friends.

“The joke was two photons walk into a hotel and the bellboy says, ‘Are you coming or going?’ The photons reply ‘Well, isn’t it obvious?’ And the bartender says ‘Nah, I’m color blind,’” said Aggarwal. “The point of the joke is that photons traveling in different directions emit different light waves depending on if they are traveling away from you or towards you.”

The minute the joke had come out of his mouth “nobody said anything for a solid minute” until one girl piped up and said, “I don’t get it.”

“Those are probably some of the worst words to hear after a joke,” said Aggarwal. “It's universally known that once the joke is explained, it stops being funny. I was able to salvage the situation in the end, but it was a scary 60 seconds.”

Yet, Aggarwal admits that for him, telling jokes during class can be very rewarding.

“It’s extremely gratifying to be able to de-stress the classroom and learning environment,” he said. “As [students], we all face a lot of stress in our classes and extracurriculars. Telling a joke and getting people to relax a little bit in the class is always a nice, funny and engaging way to let the class continue to learn and be exciting at the same time.”

Junior Robin Osekowsky finds Aggarwal’s jokes to be exasperating yet clever.

“There are definitely times when I can't help rolling my eyes,” said Osekowsky. “Every once in a while, though, he makes a really fantastic joke, though, and you just have to give him credit.”

Aggarwal started telling jokes more and more in the beginning of sophomore year.

“Once, I heard a pretty hilarious joke, and I just started telling it to my friends the next day,” Aggarwal said. “All of them laughed, and it felt good [for] me to be a part of brightening their day.”

Eventually, Aggarwal came across another joke he loved and told it the next day as well. And the next. And the next. It soon became a daily routine.

Osekowsky hasn’t gone a day without hearing a joke since.

“I hear one at least once per conversation I have with [Aggarwal],” Osekowsky said. “I think his record was around 20 in one sitting. The amount of jokes he has off the top of his head is extremely impressive.”

Aggarwal said that he tells jokes not only to entertain others but also to learn about the true meaning of humor.

“I wanted to understand exactly what makes a joke or a situation or a comment ‘funny,’ and so I started to tell different types of jokes on different days,” he said. “I judged the reaction of my friends to see how [the jokes] came across, and it became a really fun exercise, so I kept doing it.”

When it comes to teachers, Aggarwal believes that “teachers are people as well,” and that more often than not, they enjoy his jokes just as much as his classmates do.

“Plenty of teachers have gotten mad at me before,” Aggarwal said. “However,  I try to remain respectful when I tell a joke — and not interrupt the teacher or the flow of conversation randomly or out of context — to make sure that the classroom environment isn’t disrupted too much.”

Kathy Nakamatsu, Aggarwal’s chemistry teacher from last year, recalls his personality with fond memories.

“It all started with [Aggarwal] asking, ‘Can I tell you a joke?’ and from there it’s become a tradition,” Nakamatsu said. “I almost come to expect a joke out of him every time we meet. In the end, he makes class a fun place to be, and I think that’s a huge factor of his charm.”

Aggarwal said he does not plan on stopping the jokes anytime soon.

Though he loves making people laugh, he said his reputation can sometimes pose problems.

“It’s tough knowing so many jokes,” Aggarwal said. “I have a ton of ‘clean’ jokes stored up, but now that I’ve told so many dirty ones, people kind of expect really scandalous [humor] when I don’t have any. Expectations, man.”