Dark Humor is my Antidote
For twenty-three years I worked as a paralegal preparing child abuse cases for trial and sometimes I managed my deep sorrow with some of the darkest humor I’ve ever participated in.
My boss, a brilliant attorney named Sadie, was my partner in dark humor crime. If there had been a surveillance video of our off-the-record inappropriate interactions in her office the warning label would say, “CAUTION: OFFENSIVE CONTENT”. It’s how we survived.
Sadie and I were the same age and we worked for the city attorney’s office. She was the leader of the Human Services Division, a group of four attorneys, two administrative assistants, and me, the sole paralegal. We all managed an inordinate number of child abuse cases in a very short turnaround time—three to five days to gather evidence, interview and subpoena witnesses, all with strict statutory guidelines—a rather frantic and stressful atmosphere that was managed by an office team that was committed to the cause of child welfare.
I remember when I was introduced to Sadie. She said, “So, what brings you to this shithole?”
I laughed, and that set the tone of our twenty-year work relationship.
Ninety percent of the cases involved drug-addicted parents, but the remaining cases were oftentimes at the level of disturbing similar to when I turn my head at a movie scene and yell, “I can’t handle this!”
So, Sadie and I shared an inherent personality trait of handling outlandish situations with humor. I’ve always been curious about the psychology behind the attribute but it seems too exhausting to explore. What I gain from it is that I avoid uncontrollable sobbing, which is exhausting.
The discussion that reigns supreme in my extensive catalog of Morbid Humor on the Job was the one after a record setting quarter of new cases.
I had given Sadie a martian stress doll as a secret santa gift—a rubber squeeze doll with a head that featured a big round red nose, ears, and eyes that popped out like an alien in shock when it was squeezed. A hilarious gift, I thought, but her reaction was, “What the hell is this?”
She grew to love that doll. One day, we were sitting in her office catching up. Sadie was in a serious mood, and exhausted from forty hours of non-stop sad case work.
She took a break from answering emails, looked at me and said, “How many cases have we gotten?”
“I’ve lost count.”
Sadie grabbed the martian stress doll, lifted it towards me, squeezed it incessantly and said, “ANY DEAD BABIES?”
It rendered me into a fit of laughter that involved a lot of wiping of tears. And, it got me through the day.
It’s not just work when I reach for dark humor, it’s pretty much always been how I navigate my life. In 2016, my sweet mother, a piano teacher, composer and singer of Methodist church hymns in the choir, passed away at 85 years old.
I visited my sister and her husband in New Jersey to plan her funeral. It began with much imbibing of chardonnay and merlot, then my sister called the funeral home and, after a few minutes she said at a noticeable volume, “Two-thousand bucks for an urn? Do you have anything cheaper?”
I yelled, “She deserves a nice urn!”
My sister’s husband brought up Ebay on his computer and said, “Here’s an urn for ninety-nine bucks.”
It went south from there. He said, “Look, here’s a lava lamp for sixteen ninety-nine. We can put her ashes in there, place it on the mantel, and every once in a while we’ll go, “Look, there she is!”
After I calmed down from uncontrollable laughter, I said, “Here’s an idea. We can market lava lamp urns on eBay. The tag line will be, “When you think about your deceased one, does the term evil come to mind? The Lava Lamp Urn might be for you.” The humor eased the profound heaviness of it all.
These days, I read the headline news and dark humor escapes me. I mostly avoid reading about the carnival of clown characters that have been granted the authority to be in charge of matters of great importance.
The other day, I did manage to laugh at the news about Trump telling tech executives at a White House luncheon that he is changing the name Artificial Intelligence to Super intelligence because, “It’s the best word of all, and it’s the simplest.” I laughed because it seemed like a great self-deprecating comedy bit even though he’s too dense to understand the irony and absurdity of what he said.
Recently, I took a deep dive into the urn story and thought, “What if I take it a step further?” And, here is what I came up with:
I could start a show called Between Two Urns, a spin-off of the talk show Between Two Ferns. My first guest would be the creator of the show, Zach Galifianakis and my opening to him would be, “Please don’t sue me.” Then, we’d tell stories about the people we knew that died. Before the show, I’d ask him whether he wants a traditional giant urn next to him or a giant orange Lava Lamp Urn, an important detail for setting the tone of the tales that will commence. I’d mention my late father, who I adored. “If Charles Varner was alive today and read the headline news he’d say, at a volume of eleven, “What in tarnation is going on here?” while shaking his head.
And, that’s the way I manage these challenging times.