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My cousin from Tampa told a joke about her chemo and half the room went quiet
We were at my aunt's 60th birthday in Tampa back in March and my cousin, who finished chemo in January, made a bald joke about herself that got a big laugh from the people who knew her and dead silence from the rest. The thing I keep going back to is that the people who got quiet were the ones who thought they were being kind, while she just wanted to be treated like a person who could still be funny. Is there a way to tell when someone wants you to laugh at their dark stuff without just assuming every joke about illness is fair game?
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nancyg1424d ago
My aunt went through the same thing with breast cancer five years ago, and she had this rule she told everyone up front: if you don't laugh with me, you're just sitting there feeling sorry for me, and that's worse. The people at your cousin's party who went quiet probably froze because they were scared of doing the wrong thing, but freezing up is its own kind of wrong thing. What worked for my aunt was she would just tell people straight, "that one was funny, you can laugh," and after that first awkward moment it got easier for everyone. So maybe the answer is less about reading the room and more about the person with the illness giving a little green light, or the people who know her well doing it first so the rest feel safe to join in. That probably hangs on knowing the person well enough to know if their jokes are about coping or about hurting.
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