Aloft

PUNCHING UP, NOT DOWN — aiming a joke at yourself or at the powerful, never at someone smaller or weaker; kind comedy lifts the room, mean comedy divides it.

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01 Opening

Aloft is a tiny, quick-whiskered mouse-tween with an enormous laugh — and because she is the smallest one at the comedy club, she understands better than anyone which way a joke should point.

She teaches punching up, not down. "Every joke is aimed at somebody," she says, standing on a stool so the club can see her. "And the direction changes everything. Aim a joke up — at yourself, or at someone big and powerful who can take it — and the whole room laughs together. Aim it down — at someone smaller or weaker or sadder than you — and half the room laughs while one person shrinks. Same joke, opposite feeling. It all depends which way you point it."

She demonstrates, patting her own small chest. "Here's me: I'm so short that last week a butterfly asked me for directions, assumed I was a signpost, and left disappointed." The club laughs warmly — because she's aimed it at herself. "Now imagine I'd said that about the shyest kid in the front row instead." The laughter dies. "See? The words don't decide if a joke is kind. The direction does."

02 Aloft

Aloft grew up the littlest in a family of mice, in a barn full of much bigger animals, and she learned early how a joke could feel from underneath.

She was quick and funny even as a pup, and she noticed two very different kinds of laughter around her. There was the warm kind — when the big carthorse laughed at his own clumsiness, and the whole barn laughed with him, and everyone felt closer. And there was the cold kind — when a group of older rats made jokes about a nervous young hedgehog who couldn't laugh back, and the laughter had a sharp edge, and the barn felt meaner afterward, not merrier.

She got it wrong once herself. As a young mouse, desperate for a laugh, she made a joke at the expense of a slow old snail, and got the laugh — and then saw the snail's face, and felt the laugh curdle into something awful in her chest. She never forgot it. She learned, that day, that a laugh bought by making someone small is a laugh you'll wish you could give back. So she made a rule, and kept it: aim up, or aim at yourself — never down.

03 Aloft

When she was older, Aloft scurried into the JestForge comedy club, which had plenty of clever comics and needed someone who understood kind ones.

04 Aloft

She teaches the young comics the one thing that decides whether comedy heals or harms.

"You're going to be funny," she tells them. "That's a real power. And like any power, what matters is where you point it." She sets a kid up. "Want to joke about someone bossy and powerful — a grumpy king, a strict rule, yourself on a bad day? Aim away. They can take it, or it's you. That's punching up. The room laughs together, and nobody's hurt."

"But if the funniest thing you can think of," she goes on, gently, "is about a kid who's already having a hard time, or someone who can't laugh back — stop. That's punching down. You might get a laugh, but you'll split the room, and you'll feel it later." She stands tall on her stool, all four inches of her. "The best comics who ever lived made themselves the joke first. Being willing to be the funny one, instead of making someone else the target — that's not weakness. That's the whole heart of it."

05 Closing

She still aims every joke up or at herself, at the club and off it, and has never once regretted a laugh she earned that way.

The thing Aloft hopes the young comics carry off the stage is that being funny is a kind of strength, and strength has a direction — that the same wit can lift a whole room together or leave one person hurting, and the only difference is which way you choose to point it.

"Aim up, or aim at yourself," she tells them, from the top of her stool. "Never down at someone who can't laugh back. Make the room laugh together — that's the only laugh worth keeping."

When the club empties, Aloft hops down from her stool, brushes off her whiskers, and feels the warm, clean gladness she first felt the day she made her rule: that the funniest she has ever been is also the kindest, and that she has never had to hurt anyone to fill a room with laughter.

The JestForge ensemble

Aloft is part of JestForge's distributed-narrative cast. Each character embodies a different curricular primitive; together they teach the full subject.