The Gift of Dark Humor

Yesterday afternoon I thought it might be a good idea to take advantage of the sunshine, and comparatively mild temperatures, to go for a run. There was snow in the forecast which provided even more incentive, so off I went. I didn’t set out to break any speed records and didn’t feel quite up to a very long run so after two miles or so I slowed to a walk and headed back towards the house. Soon I felt the beginnings of some mild abdominal cramps. Whenever this happens, a parade of horrifying memories come to mind. I’ve experienced quite a few encounters with this particular ailment but mercifully none recently. My first course of action is always to take a quick mental inventory of what I had eaten earlier in the day. Had I perhaps ingested something unusual that might have triggered my agitation? I came up with nothing. As the cramps began to become more intense I quickened my pace. Once home, I had the delightful experience of three hours of umm…intestinal discomfort. The alert reader will notice the lengths I am going to avoid using the D-word.

Fourteen hours later, I am better but not totally out of the woods. I woke up from a fitful nights sleep around 3:00 am and have been up ever since, not feeling well at all but far better than I was last night. But, the point of this post is not to regale you with stories of this unfortunate illness, but rather to share with you an example of my life long fondness for—dark humor.

Last night around 9:30, I was upstairs in my easy chair trying to do some reading as a distraction, when all of a sudden a joke began to form in my head. I immediately typed it out and texted it downstairs to Pam…

What do you call it when you can’t remember how to spell the D-word?

Irritable vowel syndrome.

My wife’s reply was swift and unequivocal—“That’s terrible. Nothing about d,-,-,-,-,-,-,- is funny!”

In Pam’s defense, her experiences from a week in Maine with her parents last year probably traumatized her to the point where any mention of the word for true rest of her life will be off limits.

But still…I really was proud of that joke. For a brief couple of minutes I wasn’t thinking of how sick I felt. This is the gift of dark humor, allowing as it does a momentary escape from being the victim to the victimizer.

Now maybe the next time you are visited by this scourge, you will remember the joke and find comfort—or not. Probably not.