Somehow it reminds me of Comedy Central, where we were a melting pot of different shades of humor colliding like peanut butter and chocolate.

My boss and our small team were on the fringe. We were freelancers different than Comedy Central employees. We didn’t consider ourselves equal.

They were all about “leave a joke” (not a message). Anything goes. The Comedy Central philosophy: humor by consensus. And while you’re at it, make sure to ask the janitor what he thinks is funny.

To set the record straight, my boss didn’t think they were funny. You’d never catch my boss saying, “Leave a joke” on his answering machine. His comedy was too high-brow for that.

Not that Comedy Central always approved of my bosses wit. He was a Harvard Lampoon graduate, and with that came particular protocol and prestige that wasn’t often appreciated.

Our one female writer wanted more than anything to break into this boy’s comedy club, but alas, she went to Brown. It didn’t stop her from trying.

Meanwhile, my boss wore his badge of honor of his Harvard Lampoon pedigree like a Miss America contestant displays her sash. First, he was a gentleman. (We called him The Great Gatsby for a good reason, but that’s another story).

As a gentleman, he mingled with the lower comedic echelons as unpretentiously as possible. Alas, somehow, his poop still smelled.

There’s no reverence in comedy, after all. It hits the taboo. You cross the line and push an idea to its limits and see who’s laughing now.

And then there was me—a UNC-Chapel Hill graduate. No, we didn’t like Duke or Clemson for that matter. “Orange is ugly,” and if we played Harvard in anything, we would have hated them, too.

Even still, I was idealistic and wanted everyone to get along. Did we need to have all these shades of humor? I either laughed or didn’t (and most of the time, I was taking my job way too seriously to find anything funny).

So imagine how well it went over when The Great Gatsby got the idea he was going to start a porn comedy show. They planned to have a meeting about it when he returned that very afternoon since he had already gotten approval from the executives.

I was appalled: as a woman, intellectually, comedically (if that part of me even existed). It seemed to go against everything that my boss had ever stood for. How dare he be so base?

So I went to vent in the office of the female writer. She would understand, she was getting excluded from this fantasy idea of theirs, after all.

She laughed instead, “Boys will be boys.”

I couldn’t understand how she wouldn’t fight. It was a juvenile excuse for them to watch porn videos at work when they seemed to be too young even to grow facial hair.

So I’d figure out a way to get back at them on my own.

They were going to have their meeting when my boss returned to his office at 3 pm. He’d invited the nerdy Harvard Lampoon interns who were overjoyed to join him.

But I had dubbing to do, and I’d wasted so much time complaining, I hadn’t gotten to it. The VCR decks were in my boss’s office.

It couldn’t hurt to slip in before their meeting took place.

So I sprawled out on the floor behind my boss’s desk with the tapes and the labels on the floor, just like I always did. I got to work. It was a pretty mindless activity.

My boss walked in with the Harvard Lampoonies following him like ducklings going after their mother.

I didn’t stop what I was doing. The interns filed onto the couch, and my boss passed me to get to his desk.

He said, “We have our meeting now.”

“Oh, right. Of course, you do. I forgot all about it,” I said, playing dumb-blond even though I was a brunette.

“Yes,” my boss fidgeted. I caught onto his discomfort. “If you don’t mind, could you wrap that up?”

“Don’t mind me. Go on with your meeting. I won’t get in your way. Pretend I’m not even here.”

Of course, they couldn’t talk about pornography in front of me. At least, that was what I was banking on. I couldn’t have played it better if we had planned it.

A Tarheel had outsmarted her boss in all his intellectual Harvard Lampoon splendor!

I had the time of my life, taking as long as I could, holding them up.

I picked up the labels and tapes, one by one, got up, and walked to the door ever so slowly. I had my hand on the doorknob, and I turned around to face the boys.

“I’ll leave you alone so you can get on with your meeting now,” I smiled at every one of them and closed the door. Hah! Who’s the high-brow comedian now?

I ran into the female writer’s office and said, “You won’t believe it. They couldn’t have written it better.”

While Comedy Central employees were saying “leave a joke” on their answering machines, I left a joke, all right. To set the record straight, you don’t have to be a Harvard Lampoon grad to be funny.

It just goes to show; there are different shades of humor, and when they collide, it makes a great Reeses.