Liz: Impeccable Humor (part Deux)

What happens to the relationship built on sarcasm if you’re trying to be impeccable with your word?  Sarcasm is a form of humor I’ve come to rely on to ‘grease the social wheels’ so to speak.  But I notice that more often than not sarcasm is humor at someone else’s expense.  That does not feel impeccable.

Recently I’ve performed a couple of small gigs as an amateur stand up comedian.  Because I’m new to doing comedy, I’ve been listening to the comedy channels on XM radio to get a feel for the flow of a good comedy routine—what I like and what I don’t.  Which jokes kill and which jokes fall flat.  I notice that a lot of comedians use sarcasm to make fun of other people and themselves.  But some are able to find the ridiculous in ordinary situations without bringing any specific person down.  The latter is the type of humor that I think is the most sophisticated and the kind I’d like to do.  But it is hard.  While gathering material it was really tempting to just fall into cheap shots at easy targets.

I don’t want to become boring and un-funny because I’m trying to be impeccable with my word.  If I’m being completely honest, part of me would rather abandon the effort at truthful and beautiful speech than lose the ability to be humorous.  Funny is how I survive awkward social situations…well, ANY social situation really.  I like to laugh, and I like to get people laughing.  It is a complete and total rush to come up with that perfect one-liner that leaves your buddies laughing so hard they cry.  And if I wasn’t able to poke fun about the crazy, wonderful, awful, scary things kids do, I’m pretty sure I would have gone insane from the pressure of being a mom by now. 

But getting into darker territory, I often use humor to deal with a situation when someone hurts my feelings, or when I feel insecure.  Those are the times when I’m most likely to label people.  I knew this had gone too far when I was talking to a friend about a neighbor yesterday and I could only remember the label I’d given her, not her real name!   I realize that the fact that I don’t like her is reinforced every time I call her by that name, which isn’t kind or fair to her.

I remember back to Sewanee days, when I was surrounded by a group of highly intelligent and creative friends.  We could spend hours coming up with funny plays on words, re-writing song lyrics, or making up wacky one-act plays about anything and everything.  Recently, a group of us met for a class reunion for the weekend, and I think we laughed the entire time.  It felt so good, and it wasn’t mean-spirited at all.  So there is hope:  it’s possible to laugh hysterically without being cruel.

For now, my way of turning humor into positive speech which creates rather than tears down will be to consider whether I’d say it in front of my kids.  My kids both have the ability to crack me up and get me laughing.  And they do it all without sarcasm or making fun of others.