Analysis Of Punchline Charlie

Punchline Charlie

It takes a great sense of humor to appreciate a great joke. I have a good sense of humor. You see, you gotta be able to appreciate the nuances; the little pieces of the joke that make it funny, without askin’ you to laugh. If you can’t do that, then that joke is gonna fall deader than a door nail right in front of you. This is why Charlie and I were such great friends; he could tell the jokes, and I could appreciate them. That’s why I called him “Punchline”. He never fuckin’ stopped bein’ funny, like that time

You see, no one else could appreciate Charlie’s last joke. A town of five hundred people and just a fifth of a percent of them could realize the true genius of it, catch all of the nuances and fit the pieces together. The other

Slow, to draw it out, but without hammin’ that shit up. This straight-A, football-playing rockstar suddenly gets not-so-straight A’s. He misreads plays on the field. Not all at once, mind you. Can’t give it up too easily. This isn’t Punchline’s punchline. He starts out pretty classically, a “C minus” on his Survey of Latino-American Literature paper. Now this is a huge deal. His parents are worried, his girlfriend’s worried, his professor, everyone. Charlie ain’t.

He keeps it up on the football field, too. Maybe that reverse option on third and long should go the other way? The ball gets a little too heavy for him a couple a times. But it’s all good. Charlie can still go to the party after the game. He tried whisky for the first time a couple weeks ago, and he likes it, so he tries some more. The grades slip a little more, he sips a little more, and it all goes according to plan. He’s gotta be the biggest fucking genius I know! When that semester had ended, Charlie was no longer on the Dean’s List. He failed some classes too, so his advisor told him that he couldn’t graduate on time. He told the advisor to fuck off, but he always liked December