This is fantastic. And true. My brother was hit by a car, had 27 major injuries, spent months in the ICU, and is permanently disabled. He refers to the incident as his "surprise makeover."
I enjoy learning about other people's weirdly specific fears. Rapture butt is a new one, and it's hilarious but I'm sure it was genuinely terrifying when you were a kid.
A dear family friend lost one of her arms to flesh eating disease during the lock-down period of the pandemic. She calls herself 'The One Armed-Waif'. Like, "Be a dear, bring a glass of water to the one-armed waif, would you?"
Much obliged, Lyz. We should be laughing our asses off all the goddamn time, for life is especially cruel and aggressively indifferent right now.
Be well, MYaM community, and thanks for all you do for the collective, here and everywhere. It brings us all up to a state of "functional enough" -- that ain't nothing.
So true. In March 2020 at the start of Covid, the morning after my mother died, I was in hysterics at the cheesy way the third string guy at the funeral home was trying to upsell me on "Jewish" coffins with "The Moses at the top" and the mid tier one called "The Hezikiah," which I couldn't say without laughing uncontrollably.
Also, within 24 hours of my mother dying, my daughter was married in our living room, because we'd cancelled the larger ceremony and celebration.
It was the craziest 24 hours of my life.
In case anyone is interested, I wrote an essay about it called "Laughing and Crying At the Same Time"
I was walking down a street once and this sketchy guy starts following me and talking to me trying to get me to stop. He seemed a little unhinged so I walked a little faster and was about to turn into a store when I heard him say “I just want to talk to you. I don’t want to have sex with you.” I paused and thought “Wait- why don’t you want to have sex with me??”
Last year, my aunts husband died. He was known to all to be a big fucking jerk and an abuser. He left my aunt mentally broken and severely depressed, and to this day she hasn’t recovered. I inherited the unfortunate task of taking care of his estate. Trying to keep everything organized and folders, I labeled his Asshole’s Paperwork. I get a sadistic chuckle every time I look at the file
I’m a terrible comedian. Self conscious and socially awkward. I can’t force humor. But you are really on to something with crying before laughing, finding the absurdly funny in the totally inappropriate context giving it sharp relief.
Desert Storm. Bradleys sweeping across Talil airfield. Iraqi units in disarray, being crushed. Towering pillars of oily smoke rising from burning tanks and equipment. Iraqi bodies strewn all along the road where they dropped, some, absurdly with every stitch of uniforms blown off.
A red morning in Hell.
Quick halt to reorient and rearm. More Iraqi forces ahead of us (with an hour left to live). A small white Toyota pickup loaded with tomatoes comes careening like lunatics right through the middle of our combat formation. Headed to market in Basra. “Stop!!! Halt!!! WTF!!??” No one can get a bead on them and anyway they’re headed away from us, in the wrong direction, idiots, out where we are about to resume our assault. I’m sure they’re done for.
Back on attack. Iraqis run like deer from their trenches under our Bradley cannon fire. More flames, bodies and mayhem. I pull up three kilometers down the road and see the white Toyota pickup utterly obliterated. Pieces. Burning. Red tomatoes everywhere. Gore? Then I look a hundred feet to my right and there are the two perfectly healthy Iraqi tomato farmers sitting on their last crate of tomatoes watching the end of their Iraqi tomato farming world.
I totally lost it and was laughing useless for an hour. Couldn’t finish commander’s net call still giggling over the FM radio net.
My family has raised Gallows Humor to Nobel Prize levels. At my paternal grandmother’s funeral, which was on July 7, my mother’s sister (sorry about the large number of family designations, but this is important to the story) was trying to get her mother to go home instead of to the graveside service. My uncle, her husband, interrupts and in his deep voice says “Give it up Jo; you’ll never deprive Doris of the right to gloat about outliving Lucille.”
I spent the next hour repressing giggles, and since then, whenever I need a laugh, I remember Uncle Wilbur’s advice to my aunt.
The punchline here is also that Wilbur committed suicide 10 years later, which makes the story that much more interesting. I don’t mean at all to belittle the pain of suicide; only to note that I have something to remember my uncle by that isn’t horribly painful.
We do need to laugh with each other and laugh AT our enemies. As much as we possibly can.
This is so good! I make jokes at the most inappropriate times and then apologize for making jokes at the most inappropriate times. Making me so "cringe" as the kids say.
I once showed up at the emergency room where my sister was after getting in a major car accidence. The only thing I could contribute were constant jokes. The rest of my family was looking at me like "what the hell are you doing?" I don't know. Fending off the darkness I guess.
This is so me! We are in the process (with my sister-in-law and her husband) of moving my in-laws into assisted living. It is terrible. They don't want to go but can't care for themselves or their home. we don't live nearby and they won't move near us. Anyway, I just keep making jokes about dementia and the elderly. And everyone else gives me that LOOK! (I swear I'm a mostly nice person and I love these people.)
It's no rapture-butt, but when I was a kid, I was afraid the priest would report back to the pope about what I said in confession and I would be brutally exposed and excommunicated, and all my "sins" would be relayed to the congregation. That, and the (shared, I'm sure) fear that dead relatives are watching us from the great beyond (regardless of what we're up to) - a thought hilariously explored in a Pen15 episode.
Laughter through tears was the foundation of my relationship with my best friend, Betsy. I have so many stories, but one that had both of us rolling happened when she was driving me to the airport in her Jeep. My mom was in the hospital after lung cancer surgery, and my brother's partner had just died of AIDS. Part of my task was to take Christopher's ashes from the funeral home to the airport to be shipped to his family in California, and I was getting on a flight to Reno (from Seattle). As we are driving from the funeral home to the airport, I had Christopher's ashes at my feet, and I picked up the package to get more comfortable. I was startled and said to Betsy "Oh my god, Betsy, their still hot!" Most likely they were warm from the floorboard of the Jeep, but we laughed our asses off the rest of the way to SeaTac.
Ashes are somehow inherently funny. When my husband's uncle died, his ashes were split into three small urns and given to his surviving siblings. My MIL died suddenly soon after and we brought the ashes to her funeral and then (because it seemed wrong to abandon them at the funeral home) the ashes came to the luncheon at MIL's favorite restaurant. The urn looks *just like* a salt shaker with no holes, so somehow my husband and his brother ended up surviving that hard day pranking their relatives swapping out salt shakers with the ashes. It's been three years, but we're still bringing Uncle Gary to every family gathering "for flavor".
Thank you so much for this brilliant insight! (And I watched the Steel Magnolias clip and cried; then laughed. I saw that film in the theater. 26 years ago! The pain of loss and absurdity of asking why resonates differently every time.)
My daughter was in a residential facility for eating disorder treatment a couple of years ago. It was a horrific time for our family and her absence from the house was unbearable. We visited twice a week and she was able to call most days. One day her call was cut short as she had to attend a required session which she said was a cooking lesson. She giggled hysterically because she anticipated this would not go well. She likened it to the muppets Swedish Chef chaos, we both could not stop laughing. It was at this point I knew things may eventually be okay, if she could find humor in the circumstance. Laughter through tears is for certain one of my favorites.
I'm so glad you wrote this so I could read it. The handful of fears you mention reminds me a bit of the "10 things that scare me" podcast that I wish was still releasing new episodes. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/10-things-scare-me
Each short episode features a person listing their 10 fears--sometimes with little/no explanation--and that's it. Weirdly comforting and relatable and it ended in April 2020, which is like taking a fear rollercoaster to the top of the lift hill and then that's the end of the ride. Rebecca Traister did the 9th episode in December 2018, which I just re-listened to and holy shit.
I was doing an icebreaker event that was modeled on Kings, where everyone had to draw a card and then depending on the number/face do something to introduce themselves. If they drew a 10 then they had to rub their stomach and pat their head at the same time.
I know what you're thinking: omg, was the first person to draw a 10 the woman who only had 1 arm? And yes, that is exactly how that went down.
She drew her 10, and asked, "What does this mean?" When we told her what she had to do she exclaimed "But I don't even have enough arms for that!"
She was a fucking gem of a person and I think about her at least 1/month.
The cousin who hosted Christmas this year is completely blind and his brother-in-law's board game contribution was "Hues & Clues", a game where the entire playing board is just colored squares people try to describe. Blind cousin plopped down and spent like a full hour heckling his BIL, undermining his confidence, causing him to lose terribly. A Christmas memory to cherish. Later the 'house rules' for every card game invariably turned against the BIL and it was such a slow-burning revenge, we loved to see it.
This is fantastic. And true. My brother was hit by a car, had 27 major injuries, spent months in the ICU, and is permanently disabled. He refers to the incident as his "surprise makeover."
I enjoy learning about other people's weirdly specific fears. Rapture butt is a new one, and it's hilarious but I'm sure it was genuinely terrifying when you were a kid.
A dear family friend lost one of her arms to flesh eating disease during the lock-down period of the pandemic. She calls herself 'The One Armed-Waif'. Like, "Be a dear, bring a glass of water to the one-armed waif, would you?"
I am known for my dark sense of humour, I laughed so hard at this I had to send it to my sisters. thank you.
Much obliged, Lyz. We should be laughing our asses off all the goddamn time, for life is especially cruel and aggressively indifferent right now.
Be well, MYaM community, and thanks for all you do for the collective, here and everywhere. It brings us all up to a state of "functional enough" -- that ain't nothing.
yep, so much gratitude for the bunch gathered here. we help keep each other sorta sane.
So true. In March 2020 at the start of Covid, the morning after my mother died, I was in hysterics at the cheesy way the third string guy at the funeral home was trying to upsell me on "Jewish" coffins with "The Moses at the top" and the mid tier one called "The Hezikiah," which I couldn't say without laughing uncontrollably.
Also, within 24 hours of my mother dying, my daughter was married in our living room, because we'd cancelled the larger ceremony and celebration.
It was the craziest 24 hours of my life.
In case anyone is interested, I wrote an essay about it called "Laughing and Crying At the Same Time"
https://robertsdavidn.substack.com/p/laughing-and-crying-at-the-same-time
🥹&🤣 along with you David.
Thanks Kate!
Two stories come to mind.
I was walking down a street once and this sketchy guy starts following me and talking to me trying to get me to stop. He seemed a little unhinged so I walked a little faster and was about to turn into a store when I heard him say “I just want to talk to you. I don’t want to have sex with you.” I paused and thought “Wait- why don’t you want to have sex with me??”
Last year, my aunts husband died. He was known to all to be a big fucking jerk and an abuser. He left my aunt mentally broken and severely depressed, and to this day she hasn’t recovered. I inherited the unfortunate task of taking care of his estate. Trying to keep everything organized and folders, I labeled his Asshole’s Paperwork. I get a sadistic chuckle every time I look at the file
I’m a terrible comedian. Self conscious and socially awkward. I can’t force humor. But you are really on to something with crying before laughing, finding the absurdly funny in the totally inappropriate context giving it sharp relief.
Desert Storm. Bradleys sweeping across Talil airfield. Iraqi units in disarray, being crushed. Towering pillars of oily smoke rising from burning tanks and equipment. Iraqi bodies strewn all along the road where they dropped, some, absurdly with every stitch of uniforms blown off.
A red morning in Hell.
Quick halt to reorient and rearm. More Iraqi forces ahead of us (with an hour left to live). A small white Toyota pickup loaded with tomatoes comes careening like lunatics right through the middle of our combat formation. Headed to market in Basra. “Stop!!! Halt!!! WTF!!??” No one can get a bead on them and anyway they’re headed away from us, in the wrong direction, idiots, out where we are about to resume our assault. I’m sure they’re done for.
Back on attack. Iraqis run like deer from their trenches under our Bradley cannon fire. More flames, bodies and mayhem. I pull up three kilometers down the road and see the white Toyota pickup utterly obliterated. Pieces. Burning. Red tomatoes everywhere. Gore? Then I look a hundred feet to my right and there are the two perfectly healthy Iraqi tomato farmers sitting on their last crate of tomatoes watching the end of their Iraqi tomato farming world.
I totally lost it and was laughing useless for an hour. Couldn’t finish commander’s net call still giggling over the FM radio net.
Damn Pete. You win.
My family has raised Gallows Humor to Nobel Prize levels. At my paternal grandmother’s funeral, which was on July 7, my mother’s sister (sorry about the large number of family designations, but this is important to the story) was trying to get her mother to go home instead of to the graveside service. My uncle, her husband, interrupts and in his deep voice says “Give it up Jo; you’ll never deprive Doris of the right to gloat about outliving Lucille.”
I spent the next hour repressing giggles, and since then, whenever I need a laugh, I remember Uncle Wilbur’s advice to my aunt.
The punchline here is also that Wilbur committed suicide 10 years later, which makes the story that much more interesting. I don’t mean at all to belittle the pain of suicide; only to note that I have something to remember my uncle by that isn’t horribly painful.
We do need to laugh with each other and laugh AT our enemies. As much as we possibly can.
This is so good! I make jokes at the most inappropriate times and then apologize for making jokes at the most inappropriate times. Making me so "cringe" as the kids say.
I once showed up at the emergency room where my sister was after getting in a major car accidence. The only thing I could contribute were constant jokes. The rest of my family was looking at me like "what the hell are you doing?" I don't know. Fending off the darkness I guess.
This is so me! We are in the process (with my sister-in-law and her husband) of moving my in-laws into assisted living. It is terrible. They don't want to go but can't care for themselves or their home. we don't live nearby and they won't move near us. Anyway, I just keep making jokes about dementia and the elderly. And everyone else gives me that LOOK! (I swear I'm a mostly nice person and I love these people.)
It's no rapture-butt, but when I was a kid, I was afraid the priest would report back to the pope about what I said in confession and I would be brutally exposed and excommunicated, and all my "sins" would be relayed to the congregation. That, and the (shared, I'm sure) fear that dead relatives are watching us from the great beyond (regardless of what we're up to) - a thought hilariously explored in a Pen15 episode.
Pen15 = so good.
Laughter through tears was the foundation of my relationship with my best friend, Betsy. I have so many stories, but one that had both of us rolling happened when she was driving me to the airport in her Jeep. My mom was in the hospital after lung cancer surgery, and my brother's partner had just died of AIDS. Part of my task was to take Christopher's ashes from the funeral home to the airport to be shipped to his family in California, and I was getting on a flight to Reno (from Seattle). As we are driving from the funeral home to the airport, I had Christopher's ashes at my feet, and I picked up the package to get more comfortable. I was startled and said to Betsy "Oh my god, Betsy, their still hot!" Most likely they were warm from the floorboard of the Jeep, but we laughed our asses off the rest of the way to SeaTac.
Ashes are somehow inherently funny. When my husband's uncle died, his ashes were split into three small urns and given to his surviving siblings. My MIL died suddenly soon after and we brought the ashes to her funeral and then (because it seemed wrong to abandon them at the funeral home) the ashes came to the luncheon at MIL's favorite restaurant. The urn looks *just like* a salt shaker with no holes, so somehow my husband and his brother ended up surviving that hard day pranking their relatives swapping out salt shakers with the ashes. It's been three years, but we're still bringing Uncle Gary to every family gathering "for flavor".
OK this made me snort laugh! I'm sure Uncle Gary is happy to be included! (Although if he was a grumpy sort then it's even funnier)
The Steel Magnolias scene reminded me of Chuckles the Clown's funeral with Mary Tyler Moore.
Thank you so much for this brilliant insight! (And I watched the Steel Magnolias clip and cried; then laughed. I saw that film in the theater. 26 years ago! The pain of loss and absurdity of asking why resonates differently every time.)
Thank you for this. I needed to read this today.
Wow, thank you.
My daughter was in a residential facility for eating disorder treatment a couple of years ago. It was a horrific time for our family and her absence from the house was unbearable. We visited twice a week and she was able to call most days. One day her call was cut short as she had to attend a required session which she said was a cooking lesson. She giggled hysterically because she anticipated this would not go well. She likened it to the muppets Swedish Chef chaos, we both could not stop laughing. It was at this point I knew things may eventually be okay, if she could find humor in the circumstance. Laughter through tears is for certain one of my favorites.
I'm so glad you wrote this so I could read it. The handful of fears you mention reminds me a bit of the "10 things that scare me" podcast that I wish was still releasing new episodes. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/10-things-scare-me
Each short episode features a person listing their 10 fears--sometimes with little/no explanation--and that's it. Weirdly comforting and relatable and it ended in April 2020, which is like taking a fear rollercoaster to the top of the lift hill and then that's the end of the ride. Rebecca Traister did the 9th episode in December 2018, which I just re-listened to and holy shit.
Here's a direct link to the transcript of that episode, where you can also listen to it: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/10-things-scare-me/articles/rebecca-traister-10-things-that-scare-me?tab=transcript
I was doing an icebreaker event that was modeled on Kings, where everyone had to draw a card and then depending on the number/face do something to introduce themselves. If they drew a 10 then they had to rub their stomach and pat their head at the same time.
I know what you're thinking: omg, was the first person to draw a 10 the woman who only had 1 arm? And yes, that is exactly how that went down.
She drew her 10, and asked, "What does this mean?" When we told her what she had to do she exclaimed "But I don't even have enough arms for that!"
She was a fucking gem of a person and I think about her at least 1/month.
The cousin who hosted Christmas this year is completely blind and his brother-in-law's board game contribution was "Hues & Clues", a game where the entire playing board is just colored squares people try to describe. Blind cousin plopped down and spent like a full hour heckling his BIL, undermining his confidence, causing him to lose terribly. A Christmas memory to cherish. Later the 'house rules' for every card game invariably turned against the BIL and it was such a slow-burning revenge, we loved to see it.