Quote:
Originally Posted by fdpaq0580
Dear Boomer,
I agree that there is a spectrum of humor. This is not meant as a lecture, just conversation. I am one of those that spot a double-entendre or innuendo. Sometimes even when it isn't there. I, like you, don't mock the unfortunate, but I can see the humor in some of the situations they may encounter. Even when I am the unfortunate one, there is a humorous perspective. Example: I had cancer in my neck. Treatment was long and terrible. When I could no longer eat or drink, I had to take nourishment through a tube in my belly. When my radiation nurse saw it for the first time, she asked how I felt. I smiled and told her I was a member of the Borg collective. She laughed hysterically, not at me, but with me at my bizarre appearance.
The situation in both Russia and Ukraine is horrible. But I, for one, have no control over these events. But I, and apparently others, can find humor in the sometimes silly protests or bans that take place. Laughter is often a coping mechanism that eases the pain of horrible reality. But it doesn't change that reality.
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Humor sure is hard to explain and discuss isn’t it.
Your sharing of how you made your nurse laugh made me think about my dad. We still talk about the one-liners he could come up with, making his nurses laugh as they cared for him during a difficult and serious illness.
Actually, the situation you are describing shows you as a kind soul, using your gift of wit to make someone else’s day a little brighter. Even as you were undergoing something so hard, you brought laughter to another human being.
Humor and timing go hand-in-hand. Your timing was perfect. You made a memorable impression on that nurse, even as you were in such a scary time. Nurses need those lovely, gently funny interactions with their patients. I don’t think they get enough of them.
Even though you did not know that nurse well and will never see her again, that brief moment in time is an illustration of that famous, and so true, quote from Maya Angelou. . .
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
(That well-known quote applies to both the positive and the negative in so many different types of encounters we have with each other, sometimes even in something as anonymous as TOTV posts — and it certainly applies to how we respond to varying forms of humor.)
Boomer