Think Before You Joke

My sense humor is pretty corny. I insert dumb jokes into just about everything. I won't say they're funny, but for some reason, my brain is quick with making connections to cheese.
The last couple of years, I have noticed a shift in the way my comments are perceived. Often, in an attempt to lighten the mood, I end up meeting a wall of defensiveness.

I noticed this first in the school setting. I find that I have to build a relationship with a teacher before I can be silly with them. My sarcastic humor is met with excuses and reasons backing them up.
For example, one of the copy machines at my school is almost always broken. So when I need to make copies, I usually have to wait in line. To pass the time, I make comments like, "We need to pray over that machine and only speak in soft tones around it." This poor attempt at humor is met with excuses, "I haven't copied anything in days and I have most certainly not touched that machine."
Or, I try to pump a kid up making a big deal of a small accomplishment. "Teacher, can you believe what I saw today? I saw so and so behaving himself and walking correctly in the hallway!" This is met with "Yeah, he better walk right because I've been lecturing him all day and his granny was up here yesterday."
This happens to me again and again in the educational setting, but it's not limited to that.
Last night I called and ordered a pizza from the local chain. They said it would be ready in 10 minutes, which was amazingly fast in my book.  So I drove there and saw that one man was on the phone taking orders and my pizza waited patiently to be boxed and handed over.  This was less than 10 minutes from when I made the phone call, so I was amazed at the speed of things.
The employee on the phone pulled the phone away from his ear and yelled to another employee in the back. The new guy immediately responded and came to the counter to help me.
I said, with a smile on my face, "I can't believe I had to wait so long. That pizza has been sitting there for a whole 30 seconds!"
He just stares incredulously at me.
"Ma'am, I've been in the back training a new employee. I'm sorry you had to wait."

www.sxu.hu

"Ummm, I was just kidding. You guys are amazingly fast."

After these uncomfortable situations pass, I usually remember there are reasons that someone didn't think my humor was funny.

• Maybe it really wasn't funny.
• Maybe I'm the only one in the room not stressed out to my utter limit.
• Maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture and this person is just trying to put one foot in front of the other and survive. Maybe they are using all their energy to carry their load and I'm distracting them.

Once I got in the car with my pizza, I remembered the pizza store has been robbed several times since I've lived in this neighborhood. That's not laughing matter. If I was constantly afraid of being robbed or attacked, I wouldn't want to laugh at stupid jokes either.

And with teachers, I usually end up finding out that a parent had verbally attacked the teacher that week and pinned their child's failures and misbehavior on the teacher.  When I went on a field trip with the kid's school this week, one teacher confided that a parent had been to school the previous week and cursed out every one in the office and all the other grade level teachers except her. She said she was immune that time because the parent wanted to attend the party in her class.

I'm going to try to make a shift. Since no one is laughing at my jokes anyway, I'm going to try to stop telling them. Instead, I'm going to try to stop filling awkward silences. If I just have to say something, instead of a joke, I'm going to try to insert a kind word.

Everyone seems to be overworked and overwhelmed. Maybe a kind word recognizing that will help more than a cheesy joke.