I was in the grocery store the other day and we were prancing around being silly. Suddenly I got off on the wrong humor-path and made jokes about dark material. It could have been funny ha ha and onto the next joke, but my friend had some traumatic experiences related to what I was joking about and said not to make jokes about that stuff.
Comedians make dark jokes all the time, and I often think they are funny. If someone else does it, I don’t have to be as actively involved. I can turn off the set if South Park gets a little too mean. But I don’t want to go there with my humor anymore. Every time I do lately it seems to backfire and I feel bad. And even if I get away with a dark joke, what’s the point? I’m too sensitive for that kind of humor, and it doesn’t uplift me. As far as I’m concerned, a good rule will be to joke about what I know. If I have a particular traumatic experience and want to joke about it, that’s fine, but I shouldn’t be making jokes about other people’s trauma.
It ended up being fine, and we found one of those mini peppers on the ground on the way out of the grocery store. I put the pepper into a bouquet of tulips. It blended in just perfect. We made jokes about replacing tulips with peppers. When boyfriends bought these bouquets for their girlfriends they’d have some explaining to do. Silly humor is the humor for me.
danscreativeoulet 