The Original Try not to Laugh Challenge

You’ve all seen those “Try not to Laugh Challenge (99.9% OF PEOPLE LOSE!!!) ” videos, right? Oh come on, they blew up on YouTube a couple years back? Now, most of you may recall those with groans. “Oh Kevin, why’d you have to remind us of that trend…?” While many uploaders merely hopped on the bandwagon, uploading poorly edited, dull, lifeless clips seemingly drawn from a randomizer, failing to draw out even the classic amused-nasal-exhale, you have to admit: some of them were good, and a lot of them absolutely crushed the YouTube algorithm.

Well, in a way, Mark Twain’s “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” embodies an early version of this challenge. 

We’ll start with a brief introduction of his background. If you’re an avid Twainer already familiar with this, feel free to skip the majority of the next two paragraphs.

Torn straight from Wikipedia (don’t worry, I cross check all of these facts!): Mark Twain, AKA Samuel Langhorne Clemens, born in Florida, Missouri, and raised in Hannibal. He lived his glorious life from November 30, 1835, to April 21, 1910. A fun fact lies there, from Wikipedia: “Twain was born shortly after an appearance of Halley’s Comet, and he predicted that he would “go out with it” as well; he died the day after the comet returned.”

Mark Twain’s initial career path was as wild as his hair. He began quite normal as an apprentice to a printer (the people kind), and then he worked as a typesetter. But he soon began experimenting with his true calling, piloting a riverboat for many years. After that phase, he moved out west with the hopes of striking it rich in a gold mine. Though his mining endeavors proved physically fruitless, it was at one particular Angels Camp in California that he figuratively struck gold.

It came to him in the form of a story: “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” You may be familiar with this story, or you may not, but we all know Mark Twain as the famous writer he became later in life by his Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and the numerous other works he produced. But at the time he wrote this frog story, he was just an unknown guy, hopelessly in debt, uncertain about what he was going to do with his life. But the jumping frog jumped a magic spell and turned his life around. The story was an instant, worldwide hit. Mark Twain had found his voice as a writer.

For those of you who haven’t read it, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” on first sight, is essentially a lighthearted story within a story. The narrator, whose name is unbeknownst to us readers, calls upon a garrulous old man named Simon Wheeler at the request of a friend, and he subsequently bears a long, monotonous story about a certain Jim Smiley and his talented frog. This frog story begins by establishing a regular storytelling premise, drawing in the unsuspecting reader, who prepares him or herself to sympathize with the narrator and braces for lengthy monotony. But after three introductory paragraphs, Wheeler delves into a tale that eventually renders the reader unable to contain their laughter.

In my research of this story, I came across this quote from Mark Twain, describing the inspiration behind his writing:

“I heard the story told by a man who was not telling it to his hearers as a thing new to them, but as a thing which they had witnessed and would remember. He was a dull person, and ignorant, he had no gift as a story-teller, and no invention; in his mouth this episode was merely history–history and statistics; and the gravest sort of history, too; he was entirely serious, for he was dealing with what to him were austere facts, and they interested him solely because they were facts; he was drawing on his memory, not his mind; he saw no humor in his tale, neither did his listeners; neither he nor they ever smiled or laughed, in my time I have not attended a more solemn conference. To him and his fellow gold-miners there were just two things the story that were worth considering. One was, the smartness of its hero, Jim Smiley, in taking the stranger in with a loaded frog; and the other was Smiley’s deep knowledge of a frog’s nature–for he knew (as the narrator asserted and the listeners conceded) that a frog likes shot and is always ready to eat it. Those men discussed those two points, and those only. They were hearty in their admiration of them, and none of the party was aware that a first rate story had been told, in a first rate way, and that it was brimful of a quality whose presence they never suspected–humor.”

And so Mark Twain took the man’s story and transformed it into this masterpiece in a way that you would never expect. Though he complains about Coon’s storytelling abilities, he uses those very characteristics to convey his humor. 

The contents of the story are equally as important as the way it’s told. 

Sure, the story would have been amazing by itself, but Twain transforms it into an absolute masterpiece by encapsulating the frog tale as narrated by a kind, well-intentioned old man, heard from the point of view of compliant narrator with limited patience. After reading the quote by Mark Twain, you can clearly extrapolate that the narrator of the story is meant to resemble Twain himself, while garrulous old Simon Wheeler is the original man who originally told Twain the story. 

The frog story itself is hilarious, but when you are reminded that it is told in the most monotonous, factual tone and imagine yourself in the place of the narrator, you grow amazed by how he never burst out laughing. So, to end this post, I very much encourage you to read this story. Not only this, but I challenge you to read this short story out loud, in the same way that garrulous old Simon Wheeler does. This, was the original try not to laugh challenge.

Hurm, Gerd. “American Phonocentrism Revisited: The Hybrid Origins of Mark Twain’s Celebrated Frog Tale.” AAA: Arbeiten Aus Anglistik Und Amerikanistik, vol. 23, no. 1, 1998, pp. 51–68. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43025555.