Being had on (having someone on...)

 First published in Column 8 on the 24^th July, 1991

 I recently overhead a conversation at the library – my second home.

‘We’re only having you on,’ the librarian said with some amusement, after having found she’d unintentionally convinced a lady that she’d have to pay a fee to join the library.

But the lady was oblivious to the joke – somehow it had passed her by.

I mention this not to condemn the librarian in any way – librarians are amongst my most helpful acquaintances – but to comment on the fact that it’s only in the last few years that I’ve understood how great a divide separates the two peoples of the world: those who appreciate being had on and those who don’t.

When I was a callow youth, I spent my first several months in London blissfully having everyone on in a typical Kiwi fashion. Only after a portly Welsh baritone came to me one day and told me that not everybody understood I was only joking did I reconsider how I put things.

To be quite honest, I was amazed. Everybody I’d gone to school with – or nearly – and certainly all my family regarded having other other people on as a normal part of human interaction.

And having people on is so ingrained I find it hard to stop. I’m addicted to it: I have to test everyone out. Some people click immediately. Others stare blankly, because what you’ve said to them is so blatantly silly they wonder why an apparently intelligent person could have opened his mouth and said it.

I can often tell from people’s body language what their reaction will be and that it would be wiser to leave them alone, but even then I’ll risk it.

Most New Zealanders can be had on, unless they’re in the midst of some trend that requires everything to be taken very seriously. Yuppies and Dinkies (double-income, no kids) possibly fall into this category, as do people who are having guilt trips about our ancestry.

In spite of what the Welshman said, many English people can be had on. My wife and her family are prime exponents of the art. The out-laws, as the rest of us call ourselves, vary somewhat in our ability to respond, from the reasonably aware like myself to those who adopt the cold fish approach.

I don’t find, however, that many Americans enjoy having the mickey taken out of them.

My theory about that is as follows: the English have been around so long they can afford to be had on; they’ve survived the Norman Conquest and Hitler and having their crisps mucked about with by the EEC.

The average New Zealander enjoys being had on because we’re still like a nation of kids, finding out how to pronounce each other’s language, and either overdoing it or doing it undone.

The Americans, however, have discovered that they now have culture with a capital C. After all, they invented some real art forms, like jazz and Westerns and the Simpsons, and people are beginning to release that they’re a force to be reckoned with. They’re out to save the world.

This makes them more likely to take themselves seriously. Someone coming along and trying to have you on, is just not on!

Here’s a totally irrelevant afterthought. Has anyone considered doing a thesis on the etymological roots of the phrase ‘to have on?’ I’m sure it’s a subject that would keep an otherwise unoccupied English major occupied for years.

 

The photo has little to do with my subject, but it's 
delightful to see Princess Anne enjoying herself. 
Courtesy: Ian Livesey

Since I wrote this thirty-four years ago, nothing’s changed. I’m as bad as ever at having people on, or kidding them, or taking the mickey out of them. Though I’ve never learned exactly what the mickey is…