There used to be a clever infographic going around that examined the major challenges of expat life around the world. The last point it covered was Sense of Humor. It claimed that relating to a different culture of humor and falling out of touch with your own can be a stressful part of expatting, more than people realize. If you use humor to relate to people, it can be downright isolating when you move to a country where you have to learn a new language.

I know my personality does not come across here in Spain because so much of American humor is based on our cultural references: Movie lines, ridiculous celebrities, memes, sayings, news stories; sub-cultural, TV and commercial references, and of course historical references…the list goes on. While I am exposed to some of it in series or memes or Instagram, these are my own private expositions, and what I carry into my every day life is lost on everyone except my expat friends.

Image if everything listed above was gone from your repertoire of funny. Everything you can convey with “these are not the ‘droids you’re looking for,’ or and simple YOLO in response to why you are doing something that is questionably safe, and what would you be left with? It’s like watching the Simpsons in Spanish. Which, if you have ever done, you’ll notice the translation may be correct, but the humor is lost, which turns the thing into a children’s show instead of the satirical sitcom that it is.

Now, impose this loss of repertoire on a top of a totally different culture of humor, one in which you are now nearly always lost. Sure, you chuckle along with the others when a joke is made, but mostly because of the situation and not so much the humor. One of the people in the group may have a hilarious high-pitched laugh, or the delivery was particularly animated and that itself was funny. And perhaps you understand what the delivery was getting  at, but it just doesn’t hit you there.

This is one of the reasons I travel to the US at least 3 times a year. I take in and enjoy the culture of humor with others. It is one thing to be surrounded by humor in all forms of media, at least when it is  in my own language. It’s another thing to observe the living culture of humor in bars and shops and while standing in lines. This offers context and opportunities to banter that remind me that, after feeling like a dullard for a fudged up delivering of a witty comeback delivered to half smiles or worse, the question como? as a response, that yes, I am clever after all.