I’m a master in the art of dad jokes. The more it makes you groan and roll your eyes, the better. The other day, while my brother-in-law was working on a patio we hired him to install, I was full of them:
As he was using a leveling tool to make sure the dirt he poured was even: “So I see you leveled with that dirt.”
As he was cutting away some roots: “Glad to see you getting to the root of the problem.”
With all the difficult things society must grapple with these days (a pandemic and racially charged civil unrest to name two of the biggest), a little dad humor is something we all need. You simply may not realize it yet.
And so, I give you some recent favorites. Groan, shake your head and be free of your worries, if only for a few seconds.
Several people have forwarded me news stories about Target getting flak over an “OCD Christmas” sweater on sale in its stores. The question: am I offended? No.
I do, however, see it as another example of the very thin line between hurtful and humorous.
Mood music:
I don’t think the sweater is particularly clever. It’s just the latest in a long line of attempted OCD humor that falls flat. I love OCD jokes when they are well done, but this doesn’t qualify.
Other OCD sufferers, however, are going to be hurt and anger.
I’ve written many posts about OCD gag gifts, particularly one about OCD hand sanitizer. They describe items that amuse the hell out of me. But I’ve also gotten feedback from readers who worried these gifts and other brands of OCD humor would only reinforce the stigma that keeps people like us in the shadows.
I firmly believe that humor is an important coping tool for someone learning to manage depressive mental disorders. Abraham Lincoln, a chronically depressed man for much of his adult life, relied on it during the darkest days of the Civil War. He reveled in telling jokes and amusing stories. It helped get him through the pain during a time before antidepressants.
But the stigma around OCD is still alive and well. I see people all the time talking about “their OCD” when they’re really talking about their Type-A personalities. That doesn’t bother me much, but I know people with OCD who get wounded by such talk. OCD behavior is still the stuff of ridicule and belittling. People will still make fun of a person’s quirks, which embarrasses and hurts that person when they inevitably find out that they’re being made fun of.
Would people find the gags funny if they were about cancer or heart disease? The truth is that we think differently about physical diseases than mental ones. We understand the ramifications of physical diseases better, making them more socially acceptable. And when a physical disease is a fatal one, we are much less tolerant of jokes about it. Yet people will make jokes about all manner of things for all kinds of reasons.
Most health issues need to be addressed with a combination of sober education and humor. People need to know the suffering real OCD brings about, just as people need to know the anguish a cancer patient experiences.
But we need to laugh at our conditions once in a while, too, because the laughter makes the disease appear smaller, if only for a few moments.
I once wrote that writers like me need our critics to keep honest. This post is a tribute to my biggest critic: fellow infosec professional Dave Marcus.
Mood music:
A few things about Dave:
Despite everything that follows, we’re good friends with similar musical tastes.
He owns some of the coolest guitars on the market, but he doesn’t play. The guitars hang on a wall like Han Solo frozen in carbonite.
He’s an avid weight lifter.
His critiques have forced me to do more gut checks than anyone else’s.
As critical as he is, he does agree with some of what I write.
When I wrote a post suggesting that all parents have their flaws, Dave went nuttier than Charles Manson on a hot summer night.
Not all of us were raised by lousy parents. Not all of us ARE lousy parents. No matter how one was raised at a certain point your life becomes your own responsibility. Not your parents’. Not your genes’. Not your phobias’. This post, to me, is escapism and blame. I choose to fix the problem and not the blame.
Critique 2: “Are you trying to superimpose your issues on the rest of us?”
After I wrote that there’s a burnout problem in the infosec industry, fueling cases of depression, Dave was particularly incensed. He wasn’t the only one to disagree, but he expressed himself eloquently in a private Facebook exchange he later gave me permission to share.
The scene: I’m working when a Facebook chat box alarm sounds.
Dave: Your last few OCD articles seem to really try to pigeonhole the whole community as obsessed and mentally ill. Are you trying to superimpose your issues on the rest of us? Your last article really annoys me. Do you feel that depression runs deep in the community? My issue is that you and the greater InfoSec Burnout movement sounds more and more like its an InfoSec problem or job/workplace-centric problem rather than a mental health problem that the individual brings with them originally. Granted, you may be getting lost in their greater noise. You are more balanced usually.
Me, trying to be diplomatic: I agree with your last statement and have written a gazillion posts making the point that it starts with the individual. But because we are trying to address burnout in our industry as one of many byproducts/triggers, some see it as us painting everyone with the same brush. There are aspects of this we are simply never going to agree on. It is also my observation — and I do not mean this as an insult — that if you are personally not affected by something, you don’t see is as legitimate. My experience is that there is no one-size-fits-all path.
Dave: Without research and study all you are left with is opinion.
So you see, Dave is one tough critic. He makes powerful points, and sometimes he goes off his rocker. But I love the guy.
