I wonder if bread is funny in the same way that bears are funny. I compare the two because both, while having the potential to provide merriment, also play a serious role. Bread has been a life-giving staple in the lives of humans since the very beginning of agriculture, while bears can provide humans with sustenance (bear meat is delicious when cut with pork) or death by predation.

Yet, despite our kill-or-be-killed relationship with bears, we find them hilarious, not to mention cute and cuddly. Teddy bears, cartoon bears, real life bears who are so fat they waddle, all are fair game for the humorists among us.

OK, so bears are thoroughly interwoven into popular culture. We love them, we fear them, we laugh our heads off about them. What about bread? Well, it’s everywhere. I doubt if it is a coincidence that, in an earlier era, “bread,” and “dough” were both slang terms for money. And we have come a long way since somebody accidentally made hardtack. We have spoon bread, banana bread, friendship bread, bread pudding, sourdough bread, multi-grain bread, pumpkin bread, raisin bread. . .and people are inventing new recipes every day. I would be one sad little camper if I couldn’t have my bread.

And bread can be fun too. I remember a certain brand of white bread, that will herein remain nameless, that my sister Laura and I used to play around with when we were kids. We would each take a slice, pull off the crust, and smush and roll the remaining bread into a grubby sphere roughly the size of a large marble. We called these “dough-balls,” aptly enough, and found it very amusing to eat each one in single gulp. We never really pondered the ratio of air space to actual food contained in this bread. Or what manner of grime we managed to ingest along with said dough-ball.

And then there were those two little boys from yesteryear, my father and his cousin Jim, who found bread hilarious. One day they were sitting in the living room, and a silence fell. This was their cue for the following ritual: one or the other of them said, dead pan, in a monotone, and with perfect timing, “bread,” whereupon they both collapsed in laughter. As their laughter subsided, they heard Daddy’s older sister Helen say from the kitchen, “Mad. Utterly, irredeemably mad.” This sent them into a fresh wave of hilarity. Why was this funny? Who knows?

Where am I going with this? Bears and bread, bread and bears. Maybe the point is that we shouldn’t try too hard to analyze the human funny bone, and just roll with it. We need all the giggles we can get.