My uncle's cancer joke at Thanksgiving split the table in half, and I still don't know who was wrong

Jordan Foster · 2026-10-21T12:05:04.807756+00:00

Last Thanksgiving in Buffalo, my uncle Dave, who was six weeks out from his last radiation round, told a joke about his own bald head looking like a hard boiled egg and half the table laughed while my aunt walked out. He said later that the joke was his, about his body, and if he couldn't make it funny then the tumor got to keep it serious too. My cousin argued that jokes like that give everyone else permission to make the same cracks about people who aren't in the room to laugh along. I've been chewing on it for weeks because both of them sounded right. I get that laughing at your own bad luck can take some of the weight off. I also get that once a joke is out there, it doesn't stay about one guy at one table. Where I land is that it depends on who's holding the punchline and who's just watching. So here's my question: if the person in the middle of it starts the joke, does that make it fair game for the rest of us to jump in?

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My uncle's cancer joke at Thanksgiving split the table in half, and I still don't know who was wrong | Can We Still Laugh - Free To Speak