It’s 2:30 p.m. I wander out into the kitchen to get another glass of water. To my disgust, the sink is full of dishes from last night; ordinarily I’d be tuning my portable radio to some rockin’ music and I’d have the kitchen whipped spotless in no time, but today I look at those greasy piles and I have no energy to tackle them. That’s because I have pneumonia. At least that’s what the nurse practitioner at my college’s Student Health Services told me this morning. And because my breathing sounds exactly like an old-fashioned, hand-cranked ice cream maker, my entire body hurts and I feel like absolute crap, I’m inclined to believe her.

It started with a cold two weeks ago that never really got better. Then, on Friday, I took my three-hour Statistics final, the culmination of a year-long exercise in stress and frustration. I was feeling kind of sick taking the final, but chalked it up to nervousness. But I got sicker and sicker all weekend, and by last night was running a fever of 101 degrees. If that doesn’t sound so bad it’s because our minds can’t hold on to the memory of pain: you have forgotten what 101 feels like. Your cheeks burn, your eyes blaze, at every joint there’s an invisible gremlin with a hammer and nail, joyfully pounding pain into your battered body. You can’t sleep because there’s too much ouch. Breathing becomes shallow. When your nose is stuffed up, as mine has been, you struggle to suck air in through your mouth, and your gums turn to flypaper. It’s not pretty. Or fun.

All I want to do when I’m this sick is collapse on the couch with my pillow and blanket and distract myself with daytime TV. It’s the only thing that comforts me. I can’t read because I can’t concentrate, and watching “Cheers” reruns requires no concentration. TV helps the time pass more quickly, helps me forget my discomfort, makes me believe there’s hope and laughter somewhere outside my pain-bed, even if it does reside only in a fictional Boston bar. Unfortunately, my husband doesn’t like daytime TV, so he sequesters himself in our bedroom and I feel guilty.

Let’s hope the Azithromycin I’m taking washes the bad out of my body truly danged fast, so I can get back to work (no pay for sick days) and back to school (missing even one Biology class is flirting with grade-plummet.) Meanwhile, I guess I’ll go see what’s on Channel 33. You know that show “Becker” is actually pretty funny. If Ted Danson can’t make me forget I have pneumonia, no one can. Well, okay, a lot of people could (Viggo Mortensen and Harrison Ford come to mind) but I had to try and stick this landing somehow, and what do you expect of me? I’m sick. Too sick to do my dirty dishes. And for me, that’s really sick.

I love to make people laugh. Heck, I love making people smile. But long ago I learned that taking a stab at humor is like bullfighting — it takes courage to participate, and both have tremendous potential for pain and injury. Because no matter how innocuous the joke, humor has the power to offend. In fact, savvy albeit cruel word-warriors know this, and intentionally use its two-edged sword to wound, excusing hurtful barbs as “teasing.”

But even when you mean no harm, and even if you avoid all of the obvious (and unfunny, mean-spirited) pitfalls of race, religion, obesity, etc., there is something in almost every joke which has the power to offend someone. And it’s tricky because, in comedy, timing is everything. The quick-witted casual comedian faces this dilemma: You’re in a group of people, you see the opportunity for a joke, you have less than a split second to weigh its appropriateness and laugh-potential, and you go for it. Then, one of three things happens:

1. It falls flat and there is a mild half-laugh, half embarrassed silence;
2. It totally kills and there is a roar of laughter; or
3. Someone is going to be offended.

And even if #1 or #2 happens, #3 is still a possibility as to one or more of the assembled. (If #1 happens because your material was so offensive, you’d better rethink your entire relationship with amateur comedy.) However, if you take too long pre-delivery in deciding whether your joke is appropriate to the situation, the people, and the moment, you’re sunk, anyway, because comedy has to be quick.

So, there it is: trying to make people laugh is a huge risk and I’ve endured my share of thuds. Maybe I should give it up, and simply err on the side of caution. Still, the Big Laugh is seductive. There was that one Christmas — I was at a huge semi-formal dinner party, with my boyfriend, at the home of his friend’s mother. In other words, the stakes were enormous: there was the new guy to impress, plus I was seated at a table full of strangers, at an event hosted by a very conservative woman. But when I realized the names of the two men between whom I was sitting, I couldn’t help myself: At a quiet moment during the dinner, I said brightly, “You know, I really shouldn’t be having this food.” I waited just a beat to collect the puzzled looks, then BAM, hit them with the punch: “My mother always told me not to eat between Neals.” A one-second silence — then everyone at the table HOWLED with laughter. They were mine. They loved me. And I loved them. And for the rest of the dinner party, the new boyfriend (now husband) gave me a looks that melted two inches off the centerpiece tapers. It was perfect joy.

Did I say seductive? I meant addictive. It’s moments like that which keep me coming back for more, weighing the appropriateness, taking the risk. So, to my friends and family reading this, please know that I have to go for the joke. If I fail, well, my heart was in the right place, even if my sense of timing wasn’t. And if I bomb, I’ll just do what professional and amateur comedians have been doing for decades when their best efforts fail: laugh it off. Because there’s always another show. Thank you, ladies and germs, I’ll be here all week.