When old Monty was in his formative years, I rarely missed checking out the latest issue of that essential publication for shaping the young mind, Playboy magazine.

Of course, to see this venerable publication, I would have to visit my friend Clyde’s house. Clyde’s father, a wiry bald man with a pencil-thin moustache and yellow teeth, had a stash in an oil-stained STP box way up on the shelf above his workbench in the back of the garage. Under an old blanket. Behind a pile of newspapers. He’d go out there at night under the pretext of smoking a Phillies Blunt stogie. I think the stink kept Clyde’s Mom from investigating, although not much got her to leave the couch. Don’t ask me how Clyde found it. All I know is he was generous enough to share this magnificent collection after school, while his Mom was absorbed in General Hospital and a bag of Vanilla Wafers.

Of course, I only read it for the interviews, and one stuck in my mind all these years later. An interview with funny man Mel Brooks, one of my personal heroes and a prime example of a short man raging at the world through his comedy.  For your reading pleasure, I dug up this excerpt from Brook’s second interview with Playboy (in 1975) that shed some light on why we short men often use humor as a defense. Thanks to the Web I didn’t even have to go to visit Clyde’s house this time. A good thing since his mother burnt it out down 20 years ago when she fell asleep on the couch while smoking a Tiparillo.

Playboy: Why are so many top comedians and comedy writers Jewish?

Brooks: When the tall, blond Teutons have been nipping at your heels for thousands of years, you find it enervating to keep wailing. So you make jokes. If your enemy is laughing, how can he bludgeon you to death?

Playboy: Since you’ve brought it up, why are you so short?

Brooks: You mean all of me or parts of me? OK, you want me to admit I’m a four-foot six inch freckle-faced person of the Jewish extraction? I admit it. All but the extraction. But being short never bothered me for three seconds. The rest of the time I wanted to commit suicide.

Playboy: When did you find out that you could be funny?

Brooks: I was always funny. But the first time I remember was at Sussex Camp for Underprivileged Children. I was seven years old and whatever the counselors said, I would turn it around. “Put your plates in the garbage and stack the scraps, boys!” “Stay at the shallow end of the pool until you learn to drown!” “Who said that? Kaminsky! Grab him! Hold him!” Slap! But the other kids liked it and I was a success. I needed a success. I was short. I was scrawny. I was the last one they picked to be on the team. “Oh, all right, we’ll take him. Put him in the outfield.”  …  But I was brighter than most kids my age, so I hung around with guys two years older. Why should they let this puny kid hang out with them? I gave them a reason. I became their jester. Also, they were afraid of my tongue. I had it sharpened and I’d stick it in their eye. I read a little more than they did, so I could say, “Touch me not, leper!” “Hey, Mel called me a leopard!” “Schmuck! Leper!” Words were my equalizer.

A little insight into the syndrome.