My family is full of laughter.
When I really get laughing, I have this horrible habit of flailing my arms in this fanning-like motion and hopping around demonstrating my newly intense need to pee. It's quite the scene--believe me. The flailing arms have been a joke in my family since I was little, and my mother often mocks this motion while I do it, which only increases the laughter and intensifies the need to pee.
Once you get us going, the picture is nothing short of this: My laugh dance, Mom's snorts, Grace and Tabitha's loud-mouth quacks, Josh's snickering convulsions, Dad's tears, Sarah's unbridled giggles, Caleb's half muffled chortle, and Camilla's bubbly teehee.
And some jokes never die in our house.
Years and years ago a young man began taking ballet at our local studio with us. His name is Noah, pronounced NO-ay. One of the first times we used his name at home, my mother thought we were saying "no way." Now nearly EVERY TIME someone says "no way," my mother quickly counters with, "Noah doesn't dance anymore!" And then she cracks up into a snorting laugh at her own joke.
But sometimes, humor can be inappropriate. As I said, my brother has a joke for everything, and this does not exclude off-color humor.
Sometimes cultural, stereotypical, and racial humor can be honestly funny, and I may even try to muffle my own chuckle. But that doesn't make them right.
James Willie Jones publicly apologized this week after his outburst earlier this month on a public school bus where he threatened children for bullying his cerebral palsy inflicted daughter. Bullying actions allegedly escalated to the point of hospitalizing the girl due to stress. Jones said the children even threw a condom at her head.
We may think something is funny in private, but the humor we allow to infiltrate our soul will undoubtably infiltrate our society.
Now, don't be too quick to judge me either. I'm not a straight arrow, and I do know how to "take a joke." But I also know how to recognize when something is not a joke.
I'm not trying to be prudish. I'm just asking for us to take a look at our culture, the way our society is slipping.
Mack Bawden, a senior at Copper Hills High School, was spotlighted in an article in today's Deseret News. He was spotlighted because he has done something unique.
Amy Donaldson began her article,
"Mack Bawden wants his best friend, Cameron Judd, to experience everything he does--dances, dates and even the pain of getting up early to train for the Copper Hills cross-country team.
"The problem is that Judd couldn't do any of those things without help.
"The 17-year-old West Jordan boy has cerebral palsy and, were it not for the help of his friends, he'd likely be stuck on the sidelines.
"But sometimes, the kindness of a single person changes everything."
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| Copper Hills senior Logan Anderson, left, and Mack Bawden push fellow senior Cameron Judd, who has cerebral palsy, in a cross-country meet in Herriman. |
Next time you begin "I shouldn't say this, but..." or "This is horrible, but..." or "This joke is just awful, but..." or any other sentence that leads into your lightly jesting about another's handicap, color, or way of living differently than you do, try to be the exception.
And while we're at it, if we're no longer judging by physical appearance, let's not judge based on what someone might wear over that physical appearance, or the car that might drive that physical body around, because in the end, we're all the same--each having a mother, each wanting to find love and acceptance, each making it through the ups and downs of life.
While the old adage, "Boys will be boys" may work for my younger brother, it doesn't work for the men who need to be men that lead in politics but lack in statesmanship, who represent our religious groups but not our religious ideals, and who have children but fail to understand the meaning of father.
Saturday evening, President Thomas S. Monson, the Prophet and authoritative leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, made a worldwide address asking us to see beyond the mortal casings of those we see every day.
And although I more than doubt that our future is one of loving deeds. And I doubt that kind and higher road wont always be so unique as to be make the front page of a newspaper.
But maybe, as the jokes fade and we laugh with people and not at them, we can reach beyond ourselves and touch the soul of another--we can be the "single person [who] changes everything."
Maybe we can make our own way of living "differently."
Maybe we can take the road less travelled by.
3 comments:
I've caught myself laughing or thinking inappropriate jokes, too. It's unfortunate that those are the only things people think there are to joke about though.
While growing up, I was homeschooled with a boy whose name is Noah Joseph. We always called him, "No way, Jose."
i read this article in the newspaper and it gave me chills.
it makes me sick when people make jokes like that about people.
and i loved everything about this post.
A well written post all round, but my favourite part was the bit about your laugh.
It was like I was back in Provo watching you waddle around the living room bent over with your knees crossed, waving at your tonsils with tears streaming down your face.
Good times :)
xo
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