A Joke Is a Terrible Thing to Waste

One of my co-workers is a delightful man who is grounded in the material world but has a particular kind of detachment from it that comes from humor.  He is a bit of a hero, actually.  Because he has a finely developed business sense, a superior work ethic, has compassion for everyone with whom he works and he still seems to have fun. 

I like to make jokes with him.  So it was hard the other day when we started talking about nicknames.  I told him my former nickname from another lifetime was "Mud."  He laughed and wanted to know why "Mud."

"Because I liked jumping in mud puddles."

He told me his former nickname from another lifetime was "Stick."  Of course, "Stick" and "Mud" created the obvious "stick in the mud" phrase for which I rapidly sought a joke.  Only the obvious sexual reference occurred to me.  And I just couldn't go there.  It was so obvious. I had to say it.  But I just couldn't. Propriety.  Heeding the rules regarding sexual harassment.  Seeking to avoid transgressing a boundary that would make it permanently uncomfortable to work with this delightful person.  All these held me in check.

Suppressing a joke, no matter how lame, creates an unpalatable sensation in my gullet.  

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Last week I got sucked into an online "political" discussion group.  This quickly proved to be a waste of time as the only people who wanted to exchange opinions were extremely off-kilter maniacally ignorant members of the conservative group.  Rather than attempt an even tempered exchange, their emotional states radically escalated which reduced them to the schoolyard bullying tactics of hurling personal insults and name-calling.

I attempted for a very brief moment to engage a couple of men on this page in a discussion.  I tried very hard to keep my cool and question them from a place of logic rather than emotion.  The more I did this, the more heated they became.  It was quite infuriating, actually, to observe the tactics designed to belittle another person simply because they think differently.

At one point, I grew wickedly weary of all the nonsensical rants and insults on this page.  I posted a photograph of a piece of art I made: a cross with a Goddess figure affixed to it.  This was in response to the onslaught of misogynistic diatribes against abortion that basically can be summed up with the meme "I'll stay out of your uterus if you'll keep your vagina shut."

Of course I was baiting these men.  But once they took the bait, I didn't stop there.  In one of my comments I told one of the more vile contributors to this page that I loved him and should he ever want to have sex with me, call me.  I'll even be a sport and buy a condom, I said.  You know....so we wouldn't have to mess with one of those pesky abortions. It was a lame attempt at bringing levity to the petty tit-for-tat business.

The problem with attempting humor among the humorless is that they don't get the joke.  I'm so used to being around intelligent people who seem to respond to my pathetic attempts at humor, that I begin to feel like everyone should function in a similar capacity.  Not so.

The man on the page whom I propositioned made no comment immediately after my proposition.  So I guess that's worth something.  But in later threads, he brought it up randomly.  Almost as if he were bragging about it.  "You're just jealous because some woman didn't ask you to have sex."  Yes, he said that to another man on the page.

Ah me.

I had the last laugh, I suppose.  I reported a man on the page who was threatening physical violence to another member.  When the administrator gave him a public warning, the man whom I had propositioned retorted, "If you kick him off, you need to kick Kathy Clark off for soliciting me to have sex with her."

Apparently he was too busy being outraged to notice that I'd already left the group.