When Humor Doesn’t Land

Some things are no laughing matter

(Listen to the radio version here.)

I grew up in a violent, abusive home. Sometimes I made light of it or even laughed about it with friends—a bitter kind of survival strategy. But if anyone else had made jokes about it, I’d have deeply resented it.

Right as the anesthesiologist started putting me under for my mastectomy, I had a flash of inspiration. The phrase “In Mammoriam” popped into my head and I suddenly visualized a cemetery with the owl from Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, two tombstones over the remains of my breasts. I thought it was hilarious, and after surgery it still seemed funny, so I told my son-in-law, who rendered it exactly as I’d envisioned.

But no one else could have gotten away with making light of it! People dealing with traumas and difficulties are absolutely allowed to make jokes to get through their ordeals. Others—not so much.

A very thoughtful reader who must remain anonymous was concerned about my use of humor in my post, “Detaining Migrants in Duluth,” noting that the government’s detaining human beings right now is decidedly unfunny. She wrote:

As an avid birder, I’ve both enjoyed and learned much from your blogs, but your last blog about captured migrants left me cold. This is no time to attempt tongue-in-cheek comparisons of migrant bird banding with the ongoing horrors inflicted on immigrants both legal and illegal by ICE. It was callous and completely tone-deaf. You clearly have no idea what these people are going through due to our cruel, racist and war mongering administration. People are not only being “scarred by their captors,” they are being killed. Alex Pretti and Renee Good were murdered by ICE in your home state. So, it really is not funny at all.

From my perspective as a Black birder, white birders remain clueless by choice to the lives of “Brown and Black folk.” It remains a hobby largely controlled by entitled white people safely ensconced in their respective bubbles. Your most recent post is reflective of this situation. I was saddened to read it.”

I wrote a response trying to explain what I was trying to say in the post, but suddenly it hit me that my well-meant motives weren’t enough any more than if someone made a joke, no matter how well-intended, about my childhood trauma or my mastectomy, especially if they themselves had not come from an abusive home or had dealt with cancer and disfiguring surgery. As well-meaning as I may be, I really haven’t walked the walk as far as being a minority that has for so long been marginalized in the birding community, nor have I provided tangible assistance to the immigrant community.

Based on the responses of a lot of people, I know that my post worked for a lot of people, so I do not need any words of support about this. I just want to convey how sorry I am for not thinking it through and being more sensitive to people who are mired, at this very moment, in a horrific situation involving all-too-real human suffering and death.