The Lowest Form of Humor

Despite the fact that a friend once told me, "Sarcasm is the lowest form of humor," it continues to be my preferred method of communication.  I also completely disagree with her analysis.  Sarcasm rules, except for when people don't understand it, because then the sarcastic person ends up sounding like a complete asshole at best, and a total raving psycho at worst.

I would love to know how sarcasm evolved within the development of language.  I imagine it took quite awhile for humans to learn how to combine words and gestures in such a way as to effectively communicate exactly what they were trying to get across.  Who was the first person to take it to the next level, combining words and gestures in order to communicate exactly the opposite of what he/she was trying to get across?  Whoever that person was was a freakin' genius.  Kudos to you, early sarcastic human.  You paved the way for humans to confuse the hell out of each other for thousands of years.

I find myself unable to communicate effectively with people who are not fluent in sarcasm.  We never end up getting along.  They think I'm crazy and evil, and I think they're boring, humorless, and quite frankly, not very clever.

I used to work with a social worker who didn't understand sarcasm.  When I meet people, I assume that they will have at least the most basic understanding of sideways communication, but this woman did not even possess that.  And so, unfortunately, this was our introductory conversation, regarding two young children who had recently been removed from their mother's custody:

Social Worker:  She was arrested for a hit-and-run and driving under the influence of meth and alcohol.  She had open containers in the car and her kids in the back seat.

Me:  Wow, that's some stellar parenting!

Social Worker:  [silence] [bewildered look]  Actually, I don't think it's very good parenting at all.

Me:  Oh, um...I was just kidding.

Social Worker:  [silence] [judgmental stare]

No, you just come off as a big weirdo.

Unfortunately for me, I had to modify my communication style during all future conversations with that social worker.  Having to "play it straight" conversationally is incredibly difficult.  It hurts my brain.

It makes me feel just like this.

Sometimes, however, there are situations that absolutely, positively do not call for sarcasm.  Because my knee-jerk reaction is to resort to sarcasm in all situations, I have created some unfortunate scenes.  Like this one, for example:

A student I was working with who suffers from severe anxiety was struggling at school.  When she'd come to me for assistance in the past, I had suggested a schedule change for her, but at that time she'd decided to keep trying to cope with the current schedule.  When she finally hit a wall of overwhelm, she came to my office on the verge of a complete breakdown.  Actually, another student physically brought her into my office because she was so upset that she couldn't even think straight.

Through gasping sobs, the student explained to me that she couldn't continue at the school with her schedule as it was.  Her friend sat next to her protectively, offering her comfort and reassurance.  I reminded the student that we had discussed a schedule change in the past, and she looked up hopefully and said, through her tears, "Can we do that?"  I said [AS A JOKE], "No."  And then she burst into hysterical sobs.  She completely lost it, and I started backpedaling as quickly as I possibly could.

"I was kidding!  I was only kidding!  Yes, of course we can change your schedule.  That's why I brought it up!  It was a joke!  I don't know why I made a joke right then!"

Her protective friend (who was 17 years old, by the way) looked at me skeptically and with thinly-veiled annoyance as she rubbed the student's back, trying to calm her down.  She then remarked, "Uh, yeah.  That really wasn't the right time for your sarcasm."

Oops.

My Most Embarrassing Moment

Until my mid-20s, I never had an interesting story to tell when asked to recount my most embarrassing moment.  Since I had no good example, whenever my turn came to answer, I'd just make something up.  "I, uh...tripped and fell on stage when I went to receive my diploma."  Nope.  Not true.  Since experiencing my most embarrassing moment, however, I believe the universe simply wanted to give me 20+ years to develop the ego strength I'd need to cope with the horror that would eventually befall me.

Here is my story.  Unfortunately, it is true.

Grover, you have NO idea.

I was living in Santa Cruz, California, and a friend from Massachusetts (which is where I grew up) had come out there to live for the summer.  Soon after she arrived, her sister came for a visit and brought along her husband and their son Zachary, who was about 6 months old.

To commemorate this blending of the coasts, we decided to attend an Oakland A's/Boston Red Sox baseball game.  [Cue superfluous picture of Big Papi]

He's so cute!

Our seats were located waaaaaaay up in the nosebleed section.  Seated in the same section were a couple dozen drunk, fat, ornery characters who immediately didn't like our group because some of us were sporting Red Sox gear.  They started spouting loud, borderline-threatening comments in our direction as soon as they saw us walking up the aisle.  Ah, drunken fans - such quality examples of humanity.

However, after we took our seats and the fans saw Baby Zachary, their attitudes changed.  See, Zachary was a really cute baby, and this is coming from someone who doesn't think babies are cute at all.  It was his eyes that made the difference; they were huge and green, kind of like this:

...except cute, not terrifying.  More like this:

When the doofus brigade saw Zachary, they started talking to him instead of to the rest of us.  (It probably helped that he wasn't wearing any Red Sox gear.)  "Aw, look at you!  What a cutie, huh?"  Zachary would smile at them and flash his snazzy eyes, and they'd all start ooh-ing and ahh-ing like a bunch of new dads seeing their babies for the first time.  It was pretty nauseating, but I was glad that they weren't threatening us anymore.

Zachary continued charming the crowd for several innings.  He was a very happy, smiley baby and was making all the fans giggly and joyful.  At some point (I have no idea how this happened), Zachary was plunked onto my lap to be fed.  I cradled him in one arm and began feeding him a bottle.  He gazed up at me with those lovely, trusting eyes and began reaching his little hands up to my face.  To be playful, I started "fake" biting at his fingers.

And then...

[I want to die just writing this.]

...one of Zachary's little fingers popped into my mouth just as I was play-chomping my teeth together, and CHOMP!  I bit down, very hard, right onto one of his little tiny baby fingers.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Zachary's whole body jolted, and those big, (formerly) trusting eyes bugged out in shock and horror.  And then, that happy, smiley baby erupted into horrible, pain-filled cries of despair, complete with milk streaming out of his mouth and all over his clothes.

Zachary was whisked out of my grasp immediately and handed to his poor, confused mother.  I explained what had happened, as quietly as possible, to my friend, who relayed the information to her sister.  Things seemed pretty calm (aside from Zachary's screaming) until his father said, "What happened?" and my friend's sister stated, quite loudly:  "She bit Zachary!"

That's when the crowd turned against me.  If you'll recall, everyone around us had fallen in love with Zachary over the course of the game, and now an evil woman (that would be me) had caused him to go from being the bringer of hope and joy to all mankind to being a miserable, sobbing wreck of his former self.  I was surrounded by glares, shaming comments, and general ostracism for the rest of the game.

Since that event, I've been told that, when play-biting babies' fingers, one is supposed to wrap one's lips around one's teeth to prevent actually biting said fingers.  Yeah, that would've been helpful information to have before almost amputating Zachary's finger with my teeth.  But seriously, folks, I was just trying to be playful!  What the hell did I know about babies?  Nothing!  Who the hell put that kid in my lap?  I mean really.  His mom should've known I didn't know anything about babies and would most likely end up biting him.  I blame her.  [Not really.]

So yes, that was a really fucking horrifying event.  I would've rather tripped and fallen on any stage, at any time, ten times over.  In fact, I would've rather fallen down a flight of stairs, even, or perhaps off of a cliff.  Any of those options would have been preferable.

"Well, this kinda sucks, but at least I didn't bite a baby!"

The upshot is that now I have something to say when I'm asked to recount my most embarrassing moment: 

"I bit a baby at a baseball game." 

It's even alliterative.  Awesome.

Wah.

**** WARNING:  THIS POST MIGHT NOT BE FUNNY.  I HAVEN'T DECIDED YET. ****

stupid balloon

Pictured above is a visual representation of how I'm feeling right now.  I am totally bummed out.  Depression blows.  It feels like a giant hand is simultaneously crushing my soul, squeezing my heart, and pummeling my brain.  Sah-weet.

Because everything is awful currently, I'm going to make a list of several of the millions of things that suck.  Here we go.

• Celebrities getting away with violent crimes.  Fucking jerks!  I hate them.
• Romantic comedies.  I blame them for 90% of the world's antidepressant use and 87% of divorces.

I searched for "romantic comedies suck" and found a piglet in boots.

• Tornadoes.  They are ridiculously scary.
• Cancer.  You're an asshole, cancer.  Go away.
• The word "blog."  I don't like saying that I have a blog.  Someone needs to create a new word.  Maybe that someone is me.  Hmmm...okay, I've got it:  siwoti ("something I wrote on the internet").  I have a siwoti called If Satan Were Anal Retentive.  Perfecto.
• Country music.  Every once in awhile, I will be innocently traveling in a car or wandering around a store, and all of a sudden, out of the blue, I will find myself in a blind rage, complete with clenched fists, grinding teeth, and an intense desire to maim and/or kill.  Then I'll realize that there's country music playing.  When people tell me they like country music, I immediately don't trust them.

Really?

• Greed-based, hierarchical corporate structures that lead to the creation of diabolical monstrosities like Monsanto.  Eat shit, Monsanto.  Contrary to your apparent belief system, it's not cool to systematically ruin the world.
• People making small talk.  Please just shut up, everyone.  Can't you tell that I'm depressed?  I don't feel like listening to your insipid bullshit. 

• The fact that there's no wine in my house.  This is a tragedy.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

About 14 hours have passed since I began this siwoti post, and (thankfully) I have nothing more to say about things that suck.  Last night I discovered the world's best cure for depression, and it is:  Bhangra dancing.  

Woo hoo!  Foul mood vanquished!

Many thanks to the husband for dragging my whiny butt out of the house instead of just leaving me to fester in a self-pitying quagmire of doom.

I Hate You, Jupiter

I'll admit it:  I'm a hater.  I try to avoid hating, realizing that hatred is pointless & doesn't benefit the hater, that "hating is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die," etc.  Yes, yes - I know.  Hatred is a waste of energy.  And yet, I still hate.  Specifically, I hate (to name a few) clowns, country music, and Jupiter.  Not this Jupiter:

That Jupiter actually looks quite lovely, like a really pretty rock.  No, I'm talking about this Jupiter:

I HATE YOU, JUPITER, FLORIDA!  Here, I'll write it in sand to make sure you get the message:

Jupiter, Florida is my nemesis, and soon you will understand why.

Several years ago, my sister and I had to get ourselves from Massachusetts to the Florida Keys for Christmas.  We decided to do this road trip style.  Woo hoo - road trip!  Should be fun, right?

The first day went fine.  The beginning of the southward east coast drive is very rewarding.  You fly through states so fast you feel like some sort of road trip hero.  "Wow!  We've gone through six states!  We're amazing!"  High on our super traveling powers, we discussed the option of driving through the night but instead made a late-night decision to stay at a motel and finish the journey the next day.

Our second travel day offered splendid driving conditions:  sunny & cool with hardly any traffic.  We were flying right along, listening to alternative 90s bands and talking about...I don't remember.  Let's assume we were talking about sex.  That's always been a popular topic with us.  We had just filled our tank with $.99/gallon gas, which even way back then was an incredible price.  I was in that perfectly complacent state that so often leads to stupid, neglectful behavior like flipping my parents' car off an entrance ramp and into oncoming traffic.  But I'm getting ahead of myself...

So I innocently drove into Jupiter, Florida, not yet realizing what a wretched den of sinister intentions that city would prove to be.  I had essentially been driving in a straight line for hundreds of miles and was preparing to take the only exit required in my entire several-hour-long driving stint.  I slowly exited, then began accelerating to merge onto the next highway. 

[Let me take this opportunity to mention that I was driving my parents' newly leased, brand new Ford Explorer (with Firestone tires, I might add, although this happened a few years before it became quite fashionable to roll Ford Explorers with Firestone tires).  That car had amazing pickup.  The car I was used to driving went from 0 to 60 in about 5 minutes, with gentle coaxing, a magic song, and a generous application of fairy dust.  Suffice it to say I was not used to a quick, efficient pickup.  I was used to flooring it to make the car go faster than a slow roll.]

Suddenly, lots of shocking and bad things happened all at once.  The car started going much faster than I had intended it to go.  The exit ramp took an unexpected 90 degree right turn.  I hit a curb, the front tire exploded, the car started rolling over, and my sister went like this:

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!"

[Runs out of air]

[Inhales]

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Seriously - she screamed out two full breaths' worth of screaming.  It was really something.  Even while the car was flipping over twice, 18-wheelers were zooming past and everything was smashing all around me, I clearly remember thinking, "Wow.  Two full breaths of screaming.  That's really something."

After about twenty minutes, or maybe an hour or two, the car finally stopped rolling.  We were left with the passenger's side of the car lying flat on the ground and me, still in my seat belt, hovering up in the air above my sister and raining blood all over her, since it turns out my arm went out the window and grated along the road during all of the flipping and smashing.  As soon as she had finished her second breath's worth of screaming, my sister said, "Get the phone!"

[So here's a funny thing:  years before, my parents had bought a cell phone to use in case of an emergency.  This was a long time ago, so the cell phone weighed about 5 pounds and was the size of a brick.  Whenever any family member went for a car ride that was going to be longer than a few hours, that person would be mandated to take the brick phone along just in case something happened.  The phone had been passed from family member to family member for years without one single incident.  Now, let's return to that comment from my sister...]

"Get the phone!"  My sister and I both looked to the cigarette lighter where the phone was plugged in, and then followed its cord along the interior of the car and straight out of the busted-out driver's side window.  The "family emergency" phone, in its one and only time of need, had flown away.

"Whoa, this is dangerous!  I'm outta here!"

Thankfully, just as our gazes simultaneously reached the driver's side window, a police officer's face appeared there.  It turns out he had been driving behind me on the exit ramp and seen the whole incident.  He informed us that he had already called the paramedics, and we should just sit tight.  My sister, handing me her jacket to hold against my arm, instructed me not to look at my arm, which, of course, I immediately did.  It looked like this:

Ew.

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, my arm looked like cooked hamburger meat, and NOT in a good way (if such a thing is possible).  I quickly covered my arm with my sister's jacket and made a mental note to perhaps, in the future, listen when someone tells me not to look at a mangled body part.

The paramedics arrived quickly.  They looked into the car, saw my blood-soaked sister, and determined that she was horribly injured.  Despite the fact that she kept saying, "No, I'm fine.  It's my sister who's hurt," they simply told her she was in shock and spent several minutes extricating her from the car, and then several more minutes immobilizing her on one of those scary strap-down stretcher dealies.  Meanwhile, I continued hanging in the air, bleeding steadily into my sister's jacket. 

Eventually, the paramedics figured out that my sister was, in fact, not injured in the slightest.  They became confused about where on earth all that blood had come from.  They stood around for about ten minutes scratching their heads and exchanging theories while trying their hardest to tune out the annoying buzzing sound in the background, which sounded something like:  "Could you please help my sister?  She is really hurt."

After the whole ordeal, I sent all of the paramedics on the scene this gift of thanks

At approximately Christmastime the following year, the paramedics finally remembered there was another person in the car.  They cut me out of my seat belt and pulled me out into a FULL-ON ACCIDENT SCENE, including tons of cops, ambulances, and news crews.  As I observed this scene and the obliterated remains of my parents' car, this was the one and only thought in my head:  "My father.  Is going.  To kill me."  And then they strapped me down onto one of those immobilizing boards.

We took a 5-minute, $2500 trip to the hospital (I wish that part was an exaggeration, but it's not).  They unloaded my immobilized sister & me and wheeled us into the hospital.  Once we entered the hospital, the paramedic who was wheeling me said (I also wish I was making this part up), "Just what I've always wanted.  A couple of girls strapped down on boards."

By that point, I had just fucking had it.  I'd trashed my parents car, scared the shit out of my sister, injured myself to the point where my arm looked like dinner, been left hanging (literally) for way too long, and now I was being harassed by someone who was supposed to be helping me.  And so...I started yelling just like this: 

That's right, folks.  Right after McShitface Jupiter Paramedic made that comment, I started calling for help over and over.  His response was to push my stretcher - full-force - down the hospital hallway, turn around, and leave the building.  No shit.  That really happened.  Thankfully, a nurse caught me at the opposite end of the hallway before I went crashing into the wall.  She brought me into a room where I sat for several hours awaiting surgery.

There were a few upsides to this whole experience.  1 - My father (clearly) did not kill me.  2 - My sister and I have an interesting story to tell, & I have a snazzy scar.  3 - My surgeon was really, really cute.  Other than that, the whole thing totally fucking blew.

Since that accident, my family members, while traveling through Jupiter, have experienced debilitating transportation issues including flat tires and transmissions going out.  In conclusion, FUCK JUPITER.  I hate you.  If I could kill you, I would, but I can't, so I will simply continue hating you. 

As an aside, when I returned to college after the holiday break, I was talking to a group of kids in my dorm about the accident and told them I'd flipped my parents' car over twice.  One of my dorm mates responded with this:  "Why didn't you stop driving after the first time you flipped it over?"

Wow.  Just wow.