For part of my degree, i’m taking a module on Forensic Psychology. We have it with the part-time students, which means the classes run for three hours in the evenings. Today we had a class on rape. As you can imagine, not many people were looking forward to it - three hours of rape statistics, disturbing real-life cases, and so on. And it was pretty much as unpleasant to sit through as you might imagine.
And yet all the way through, I was thinking of jokes*. Not random ones i’d heard before to cheer myself up; my mind was actually thinking up jokes about the material we were going through. I won’t share any of them, because I imagine you’d think less of me if I did so (I certainly think less of me). I am a bad person.
Anyone else found themselves thinking of jokes at totally inappropriate times?
*Being me, and considering the material, they weren’t what you’d call especially funny jokes.
My friends and I can get pretty offensive. We’re not being serious, but it can be bad. People that didn’t know us would think we were horrible people if they overheard us sometimes. We’re all actually really openminded and progressive people, we just have odd senses of humor.
Sometimes the only way to deal with really horrific stuff is to joke about it. I’ve thought of some pretty sick stuff in my time. Fortunately I’m not usually around anyone sick enough to share it with.
Ugh. Well, let’s see… there was one time I joined some friends of mine on a church fast for charity, to feed hungry children in Ethiopia… now, I was only going along because it was a neat way to spend the night with all of my friends, male and female, as a teenager, without my parents freaking out - it was a (loosely) supervised church sleepover in a huge hall, with music, games, and lots of juice. The next morning we were to have a huge pancake breakfast at another church hall, with all the pancakes, eggs, toast, bacon and donuts we could eat.
Well, the morning came, but before we could be set free to pig out, they gathered us all into a room to watch an hour-long program on those poor, starving children.
I felt bad for them.
I still do.
But I was promised food for my efforts, damnit! And much to the (much, much amused) horror of my friends surrounding me in the back of the room, I began singing softly, in a high-pitched voice:
Count me and my friends (all girls) in on the rape jokes. We have one who periodically jumps another and proceeds to hump them like a small dog. We are used to the screams “HEEEEELLLLPPPP!!! GET HER OFF ME!!! RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPE!!!” and the horrified faces of year eights. Ah the good ol’ days. I fear that when I move, I shall have a hard time finding a group so open minded about that sort of thing. We crack tongue-in-cheek Jewish jokes because half of our groups IS Jewish and more often than not, they start in on the Jew jokes. Then we get to do the racial profiling jokes about myself and someone else being ‘ethnic’.
Don’t even start on the inappropriate touching…sexual harassment panda is a common phrase
Worst one I said recently, which cracked me the fuck up. Disclaimer: I have no racism in me; my sister is black; I have friends from all countries and cultures and respect for all.
BUT, there’s this commercial on British TV for Clover butter spread. It shows Clover being an integral part of people’s lives, often at emotional moments. In once scene, a man is eating corn on the cob, slathered with Clover, with tears streaming down his face. My wife asked “why is he crying do you think?” And out of the blue, I just blurted out:
He’s crying because he’s black.
We thought it hilarious, though not at the sentiment, but the inappropriateness of the sentiment; I suspect you had to be there.
I’ll start out gently. I committed sexual harassment (sort of) at the sexual harassment training class we had at work the other day. It was given by the head of HR and she’s hot, hot, hot! One of the examples she gave was, “If I were a supervisor and I said to you that I’ll let you work such and such hours, if you agree to go out with me.” I immediately shouted, “Sounds good to me!” After the meeting, all my other coworkers came up to me and said they were surprised I still had a job (mind you, the HR head is single, I’ve saved her bacon a couple of times in the past, and I do flirt with her whenever I can, so there was little chance of her being offended).
A few years back, a friend of mine and I used to frequent a Japanese restaurant because the food was great, and they had a bunch of hot looking waitresses (with surprisingly big racks, BTW), one night, instead of getting a waitress, we were served (most excellently, I might add) by a Chinese waiter who was obviously gay. I leaned over to my friend and whispered, “There’s over 1 billion Chinese and we have to get the only queer chink waiter in the free world.” Terrible of me to say, I admit, and I have nothing against either gays or Chinese, but it just struck me to say it, because I’d been looking forward to drooling over a nice looking waitress and I wound up getting something I never expected.
Everybody does it, though. I can remember a cop telling me about coming to a scene where a woman had been raped and then had her throat cut. The woman survived, and refused to be taken away in an ambulance until the police had given her a pen and paper so that she could write down the name of her attacker. When she was safely on her way to the hospital, the cop said that he and the other officers who were securing the scene, began making all kinds of jokes about OJ Simpson being the attacker.
the original song is a classic in English as well, but between my lack of attendance of church when it’s in English (I don’t understand Chéspir without subtitles) and the double translations I don’t suggest trying to identify it.
When you feel that your brother
is in need of sausage,
do not close your kitchen
nor lock the pantry,
always seek in your mem’ry
for the words of the Lord:
my sandwichs are the mooooooooooost!
Very popular around Domund, it is.
Jokes about death are a good way to deal with it. But only if the joke in question is funny, of course.
For those who want to practice their Spanish and verify that my translation was, hem hem, extremely non-literal:
Cuando sientas que tu hermano
necesita salchichón
no le cierres la despensa
ni el cajón del comedor
busca siempre en tu recuerdo
las palabras del Señor:
¡Pamplonica es el mejoooooor!
I think, especially in this case, as with the OP’s - humour is the only way to deal with this sort of horror. I think cops must be the strongest people out there, just like I think my mum’s a strong person as a prison officer - they see the worst side of humanity every damn day and Mum says that all the officers have the best senses of humour because that’s the best way to deal with it. I wouldn’t think those cops were bad people or callous because I’m sure they take their jobs very seriously but they’re human - they have to deal with it somehow.
My wife is one who, when we first got together full time, was very PC aware. She used to be horrified by the things my friends and I casually joke about. She just about lost it when we went to a party, and the only black guy there was cheered as he walked through the door, as we were finally EOE compliant. hehehe…
Then, a few months after that, we were watching a commercial for some cold medicine with the most pathetic looking child in it.
She pipes up with “Jesus! All that kid needs is some of those crutches that wrap around the upper arm!”. She turned bright red, and began claiming herself as a terrible person.
Fortunately, I was able to stop laughing long enough to call her sister and my friend to spread the word. heheheh…
My friend and I are always making horrendous racial and homophobic jokes. His nickname is Fag (he is, in fact, gay), and any time we see the local black cop we comment on the irony. I don’t know what this proves, but at least I’m reassured that there are people as bad as myself on this board.
After about three months in the neo-natal intensive care unit, I found that the nurses started to relax around me a little more and lemme tell ya - there’s some wicked senses of humor around hospitals! Again, I think it has to do with deflecting pain through humor.
After the meeting, all my other coworkers came up to me and said they were surprised I still had a job (mind you, the HR head is single, I’ve saved her bacon a couple of times in the past, and I do flirt with her whenever I can, so there was little chance of her being offended).
I don’t get it. Can someone explain this, please?
