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mhuzzellMy family is strange.
Yeah, yeah, everyone's family is strange, I know. But one particular strangeness has taken me a good 20 years to realise: our unusual penchant for situationally inappropriate humour. Maybe it's not so strange; it could be another one of those 'Southern' things, but I wouldn't know--while we Southerners are famously close with our big extended families, we are also notoriously closed to outsiders: there is a permeable but definite wall between 'family' (not always actually related) and 'others'.
Anyway, I noticed this quite recently, as I said. On the first day of the Summer Gathering the St Andrews contingent was greeting each other and telling funny stories about how we or those close to us had fallen down. Silly stuff. So I contributed the story of how, when I was seven, up at my aunt and uncle's house in the mountains, I had been persuaded to take a turn in a particularly rickety-looking swing overhanging a shallow, rocky creek. I got in, my cousins pushed it out, and on the first sweep the swing broke, dumping me flat on my face in the creek.
Maybe I'm just a bad storyteller (fact), but I was not met with laughter, just a sort of awkward silence. "That's not funny; that's just tragic." And I hadn't even mentioned the real sting of it, which was that it was late November at the time, and biting cold. But when I was at home in May, in a bout of reminiscing with the family, my cousin Hank's contribution of "Hey, and remember when you fell in the creek?" roused belly laughs around the room.
Of course, this is the same cousin Hank who, just days before, had been telling jokes at our Granddad's funeral. (The fact that that is on YouTube says a lot in itself, if not about my family then at least about my dad.) And even before the funeral, my Aunt Holly was telling the Funny Story of 'How Daddy Died', complete with animated impressions of her Uncle Matthew ("I never had anybody die in my face before!")
But isn't that the best possible use of humour, really? To bring levity to heavy or tragic situations? I hope to God someone tells jokes at my funeral. And, thankfully, knowing my family somebody probably will.
Yeah, yeah, everyone's family is strange, I know. But one particular strangeness has taken me a good 20 years to realise: our unusual penchant for situationally inappropriate humour. Maybe it's not so strange; it could be another one of those 'Southern' things, but I wouldn't know--while we Southerners are famously close with our big extended families, we are also notoriously closed to outsiders: there is a permeable but definite wall between 'family' (not always actually related) and 'others'.
Anyway, I noticed this quite recently, as I said. On the first day of the Summer Gathering the St Andrews contingent was greeting each other and telling funny stories about how we or those close to us had fallen down. Silly stuff. So I contributed the story of how, when I was seven, up at my aunt and uncle's house in the mountains, I had been persuaded to take a turn in a particularly rickety-looking swing overhanging a shallow, rocky creek. I got in, my cousins pushed it out, and on the first sweep the swing broke, dumping me flat on my face in the creek.
Maybe I'm just a bad storyteller (fact), but I was not met with laughter, just a sort of awkward silence. "That's not funny; that's just tragic." And I hadn't even mentioned the real sting of it, which was that it was late November at the time, and biting cold. But when I was at home in May, in a bout of reminiscing with the family, my cousin Hank's contribution of "Hey, and remember when you fell in the creek?" roused belly laughs around the room.
Of course, this is the same cousin Hank who, just days before, had been telling jokes at our Granddad's funeral. (The fact that that is on YouTube says a lot in itself, if not about my family then at least about my dad.) And even before the funeral, my Aunt Holly was telling the Funny Story of 'How Daddy Died', complete with animated impressions of her Uncle Matthew ("I never had anybody die in my face before!")
But isn't that the best possible use of humour, really? To bring levity to heavy or tragic situations? I hope to God someone tells jokes at my funeral. And, thankfully, knowing my family somebody probably will.
