Robert Kirby talks about the benefits of humor

Intermountain Catholic

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Salt Lake Tribune humor columnist Robert Kirby said he had to look for ways to laugh to cope with the stress associated with being a police officer.IC photo by Chris Young

SALT LAKE CITY — "It is hard to think about being on enemy territory," said Salt Lake Tribune humor columnist Robert Kirby to the men and women attending the Salt Lake Deanery Laetare Luncheon March 19, at St. Ann Church, Salt Lake City.

This comment received a roar of laughter as did everything else Kirby said as the guest speaker. He spoke about the importance of humor and how it impacts us physically, psychologically, and socially.

Kirby was raised in a military family. After serving a Mormon mission to South America, he became a police officer in Tooele. His father and brothers were police officers, so he thought he would do the same. He has since been an editor, correspondent, and columnist for a variety of newspapers. He is the author of five books, which he labels as "demented humor."

Kirby has been writing for the Salt Lake Tribune since 1994. His column appears every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. He has been voted the "Best Columnist in Utah" for seven years in a row by Salt Lake City Weekly. He said although he is a Mormon, he only has one wife and three daughters. He moved to Salt Lake City in 2003, and said his new neighbors are nervous about having him in the neighborhood.

Kirby got into the business of humor entirely by accident. While he was a police officer, he came to understand he needed to develop a healthy sense of humor because he was seeing and doing a lot of pretty terrible things. As a result, a lot of stress built up in his head.

"If you leave stress in your head, it can do some pretty terrible things to you," said Kirby. "So humor was the most effective way to deal with stress. I did not want to go out and become a drunk or beat my wife in an effort to cope with the world, so I would laugh about things. But humor did not come around often enough for me as a police officer, so I had to start looking for ways to be able to laugh. I discovered fairly quickly that if I kept a perfectly straight face when I was in my police uniform, I could say anything and people would believe it.

"When I stopped people for speeding, I would ask them for their driver’s license, registration, and all their major credit cards," he said. "I found it amazing how many people would give them to me. I would say I just checked your credit card number and everything seems to be fine, go ahead. They were so happy to be complying with authority, they would just drive away."

Kirby was also a police officer in Utah County for 10 years. He said the police would set up road blocks looking for drunk drivers, which are supposed to come as a surprise.

"It stresses everybody out because they do not know what the roadblock is for, they just know the police are stopping everybody," said Kirby. "They would roll down their window and ask, ‘What’s a matter officer?’ I would tell them we are looking for democrats. Because it was Utah County they would say, ‘We don’t even know any democrats, but we sure hope you catch them.’

"These were some of the things I would do to be able to laugh in the process of being a police officer," said Kirby. "I do not believe God gave us a sense of humor as something to entertain us. Humor is a survival mechanism for human beings.

"Human beings have arguably the best brain on the planet," said Kirby. "Unfortunately, human beings use their brains to get themselves into trouble. We can actually think ourselves stupid. When animals hear someone shooting, they run away. When human beings hear someone shooting, they go over to see what is going on. We have been given a sense of humor to cope with the realization that we are not always terribly smart."

Kirby said the physical reasons we are supposed to laugh is because we experience a kind of aerobic workout. When we laugh, our blood pressure goes up, our heart rate increases, our blood flow increases, and we feel and think better.

"Your body produces beta-endorphins when you laugh, which are a natural pain killing neurotransmitter in the brain," said Kirby. "They are released to rescue you when you are badly injured or in a great deal of stress. People like to laugh because they get high doing it.

"The social reason we are supposed to laugh is because as human beings we are significantly different from each other sometimes, and problems arise in the way we perceive or believe things to be. Humor has a way of bringing us together and bridging the gaps that exist between ourselves and other people."

Kirby said eventually he understood he was not cut out to be a police officer forever. He simply had too much fun doing things he was not supposed to do. So he quit and got into writing. One day the editor of the small newspaper he was working for in Utah County said he needed Kirby to write an editorial.

"In the world of journalism, an article is a recitation of facts, you can give your personal opinion in a column, but an editorial is the newspaper’s official position," said Kirby. "I wrote about the five kinds of Mormons. There are liberal, genuine, conservative, orthodox, and Nazi Mormons. You can do the same thing with Catholics. The editor asked me what the heck was the matter with me, but ran it anyway. The publisher feared the angry letters we would receive.

"After that, I started targeting people’s sacred cows, that which they render as greater than themselves," said Kirby. "I got fired, and the Tribune picked me up right away."