It occurred to me today that my second language doesn’t always put my loved ones first.
You’ve probably seen the blurbs that say something like, “Sarcasm is my second language” or “Sarcasm is just one of the free services that I provide” or “I’m sarcastic. What’s your superpower?”
I would have to say that I, by and large, relate to those statements.
The problem with sarcasm is that it is often inconsiderate or rude. If you’ve been looking around at all, lately, I think we’ve got quite enough of that going around as it is. Such dark days –these days– when people don’t seem to respect each other enough or care about each other enough or love each other enough, and while I don’t think that sarcasm is the primary factor that has caused our society to slip into a mode of thinking that people are of little inherent value, I have to wonder whether or not sarcasm is a factor in the equation.
So, I’m considering working on my tendency to be so sarcastic. This might actually be significantly harder than getting back into shape.
* * *
Today, I was sitting with my kids at our dining room table, eating lunch, and somebody asked a silly question.
A silly question is a perfect opportunity for a sarcastic comment.
At any other point in time, in response to a silly question, I probably would have made some type of sarcastic reply. But, today, as it happened –instead– I stopped. I knew what I was going to say, I knew how I was going to respond. It was going to be funny and it was going to be sarcastic, and it was going to be a little mean. The sarcastic bullet was loaded in the sarcastic gun and I was ready to pull the trigger, like I’ve done so many times before.
But today, I didn’t.
Instead, I stopped and I realized how harmful those kinds of responses can be. Now, maybe it’s a little pointless to realize this after I’ve made so many biting, sarcastic comments throughout the years, to the people around me that I love the most. I have no way to be able to calculate what damage I’ve done with these snide, disrespectful remarks, little by little over time.
When it occurred to me, what I’d been doing all of these years with my own loved ones, I apologized, for all of the sarcasm, and we had a little discussion about sarcasm and rudeness –> after, of course, I answered my child’s simple question.
The thing about sarcasm –why it’s so popular at our house– is that is can be really funny. I love being funny. I love it when people laugh at the things that I say. I love making people laugh. Sarcasm, for all of its faults, has a way of being humorous.
Unfortunately, it’s humorous usually at the cost of someone being belittled or shamed.
During this discussion today, that I had with my kids, we talked about how to be funny without being mean or harsh. While we all thought that it’s probably a bit harder to be funny without being mean, and despite my honest love for making people laugh, I am going to have to try to find a better way to go about it.
* * *
I have a small green sign. It sits on the corner of the desk in my office at school. The sign says, “I’m not funny. I’m just mean and people think it’s funny.” I saw the sign in a novelty store one time, and I liked it and bought it. It’s been on my desk ever since. I thought it was a good measure of my personality.
But now, I’m not so sure that it’s a good thing. Maybe I should set my sights a little higher, especially when it comes to my students.
As a teacher, I think that I am a little less likely to be sarcastic, because it doesn’t fit in with the professional demeanor that I am normally trying to maintain while I am at work. But, having said that, I feel like I should be even more ashamed, that I wouldn’t be sarcastic and abrasive with my students, but I would with my own children.
Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not a constant barrage of demeaning and derogatory comments flowing from my mouth at my house; anyone who has spent some significant time in our home with us can attest to this.
But, trying to change myself, to become the person that I want to be, isn’t going to be worth much if I’m only improving certain parts of my life, while leaving the other areas to continue to decay and rot.
* * *
I’m not sure how it came about that we’ve become such a sarcastic society. But, as I’ve been thinking about this for most of the day, I’ve been thinking about comedy. I grew up watching the same sitcoms that everyone else watched.
I grew up watching Carla Tortelli, portrayed by Rhea Perlman, sarcastically mocking Cliff Clavin –played by John Ratzenberger– for being such a dork. I grew up watching “Hawkeye” Pierce, played by Alan Alda, ridiculing and disrespecting Major Frank Burns and Major Charles Winchester, for comic relief. Golden Girls, Frazier, Gilligan’s Island, Everybody Loves Raymond, Friends, Family Ties, Seinfeld: they were all the same. Sarcasm in these sitcoms brought the laughs. The characters who wielded the sarcasm did so at the expense of the other characters who were the punchline to the joke.
When it comes down to it, if I want to get people to laugh, and I’ve been trained by forty years worth of sitcoms that the way to get the laughs is sarcasm, then it’s going to be an uphill battle to try to figure out how to be funny without being disparaging and denigrating others.
Maybe I’d be better off giving up on trying to get people to laugh. Deep down inside, it’s probably mostly a pride thing. When I get people to laugh, I get people to like me.
It Occurred To Me Today 