Category: Lighthearted

The author explains why humor wrapped in sarcasm is one of his favorite coping tools — even though the edge of the knife can be too sharp at times.

“If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me.”

The quote is from Alice Roosevelt Longworth, eldest daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt. She was 96 when she died in 1980, and I can’t help but believe that part of her longevity was her legendary sarcasm.

For me, sarcasm is a mental release that allows me to see the humor in some of life’s bigger challenges. Of course, the danger is that sarcasm can sometimes slide into outright rudeness, and I’m sure I’m guilty of that at times.

Here’s how it works:

If people in the family, office or church community are butting heads, you can easily get caught up in what one person is saying about the other. After awhile, you can grow bitter and that will compromise your ability to do your job or be the family member you should be. That’s the danger with me, anyway. But the sarcastic, gallows humor in me will instead look at those situations and find the lightheartedness of it all.

We’re all dysfunctional to some extent and we all screw up. And let’s face it: Sometimes it’s fun to watch. If you can laugh at someone’s quirks and, more importantly, laugh at your own, it’s easier to move on to other things. Easier for me, anyway.

The alternative would be for me to grow bitter to the point of incapacitation. It’s happened before, especially after I realized managing a daily newsroom at night wasn’t fun anymore. I took every criticism as a knife to the core and my workmanship slid steadily downhill. A healthier sarcastic perspective back then would have helped me through that.

I’m sarcastic toward a lot of my friends and family, especially the in-laws. The truth of the matter is that I’m almost always sarcastic toward the people I like. Most of them get it and give it back in equal measure, including my father-in-law and kid sister-in-law, who probably gets the heaviest, most ferocious dose of my brand of humor. Both brothers-in-law are regular targets as well.

I’m finding that the kid sister-in-law’s boyfriend is skilled in the art of sarcasm. At a family event this weekend, I joked to those eating a salad I made that I didn’t wash my hands first.

“You should write a blog post about why you don’t wash your hands,” he deadpanned. Avoiding hand-washing as an OCD coping tool. I like this guy.

When I’m not sarcastic, family and friends ask if I’m feeling ok. A lack of sarcasm becomes a warning sign. For normal people, this usually works in the opposite direction.

Of course, sarcasm can sometimes work against you.

If you don’t catch someone on a good day, hitting them with sarcasm does more to hurt than to lighten the mood.

Sarcasm is also a root of dysfunction in other parts of my family. Several of my family members are equally sarcastic, if not more so. But I sometimes get offended by it because I feel like people are laughing AT someone instead of laughing WITH them. This has produced a fair share of strain on that side of the family, and I have to claim fault on my end.

If you can direct sarcasm toward someone but get offended when it’s being sent in your direction, that’s hypocrisy. It’s a hypocrisy I’m sometimes guilty of.

I’m working to minimize that.

But don’t expect me to change too much. As I said, sarcasm is a release. It’s a tool that keeps me sane.

And isn’t it better for all of you if I’m  sane?

“I’d rather be funny than happy.” — Henry Rollins

In his book, “Lincoln’s Melancholy,” author Joshua Wolf Shenk notes how Abraham Lincoln often kept himself going in the face of blistering mental depression through humor. The President enjoyed telling and hearing a good story, especially a funny story, and often a salty one at that.

Mood music:

Indeed, it’s no coincidence that some of the funniest people in history suffered from OCD, depression and other disorders of the mind, including the late Washington Post columnist Art Buchwald. Heck, Buchwald even announced his own passing in a pre-recorded obituary video with these words: “Hi. I’m Art Buchwald, and I just died.”

In my own fight against OCD, depression and a binge eating disorder, I have discovered what these great men understood: Sometimes, when you’re staring Hell in the face, it’s best to laugh and move on.

You’ve read my tales of childhood woe in past posts. Well, to remind myself that I’m not a special case, I keep in my office a tube of “Instant Happy Childhood Memories,” something a friend found in a joke shop five years ago. It reminds me that the wholesome picture of an idyllic childhood is a myth for most people. Just about everyone faces moments of adversity in their youth. It’s part of the natural flow of life. Nothing to see here. Move along.

I’ve found that there’s joy in sarcastic humor, as long as the person on the receiving end knows it’s all in jest and that I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t like them.

My father-in-law and sisters-in-law — especially the youngest, whom I long ago branded with the nickname “Blondie” — understand this, and give it back in good measure. Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, was a master at sarcasm. In her home off Dupont Circle in Washington DC, she kept a pillow on the couch with the following line sewn across it: “If you don’t have anything nice to say about anybody, come sit by me.”

Instead of taking myself too seriously, I’ve found it’s better to laugh at myself. After all, there’s a lot to laugh about: The oversized ears, feet and nose, the bald head, the bobbing walk, the hands that swirl like windmills when I get excitable about something I’m writing.

Noting that I used to be a skinny metal head with hair halfway down by back, I like to tell people that I’m now bald and all that hair is ON my back. But my wife doesn’t mind, so neither do I.

Other reasons worth laughing at myself: Even though the OCD makes me go batty whenever something on my desk is moved out of place, I still insist on cluttering the desk with historical, political and humorous trinkets. It’s pretty much impossible NOT to knock something out of place, and it’s usually done by my own hand. At home we keep all the living room quilts on a rack in the corner. Naturally they’ll keep getting pulled down by my 6-and-8 year-old boys. Yet there’s often the cyclical process of them pulling them down, me putting them back and them pulling them down again. Knowing their old man has some quirks of personality, I wouldn’t be surprised if they do it on purpose for a laugh. I wouldn’t blame them, either. I’d do the same thing.

I’ve also been known to engage in the time-honored OCD habit of taking my laptop in and out of my briefcase several times before leaving the office. If you don’t find that funny, there’s something wrong with you.

Then there’s the challenge of family dysfunction. I’ve mentioned that, too, in previous posts, but the truth is that we ALL have some family weirdness that keeps us off-balance. There’s always the crazy uncle, the drunk sibling, the hot-tempered and hyper-critical parent. I’ve been all of the above at various points in time, though over time I like to think I’ve become more easygoing with my kids. You’ll have to ask them.

A friend of mine once summed up the best way to handle difficult family dealings with this line: “Put the fun back in dysfunctional.” Good advice.