Journal: 22 June, 2024, morning.
Have you ever been the butt of a practical joke? How did that make you feel?
I did not know there was such a thing as a practical joke until I started school, which says much about my family life and parents. Given that background, these things called practical jokes were a rude surprise to me. My reaction was essentially puzzlement: “Why would anyone do that?”
Humor is a strange thing.
The things we find amusing and witty and comical are as different as we are.
Humor essentially pokes fun at the human condition, the absurdities of life. It’s “whistling in the dark,” a bravado against our sure fate, thumbing our nose at life’s certain irony.
Are practical jokes humor? Are they humorous? To the one authoring them they must be, else why do them? To the ones laughing at the person who is the butt of the joke, they must be, hence the laughter, or perhaps it’s more just relief they themselves were not targeted.
That’s the origin of that phrase, “butt of the joke,” by the way. Here’s the explanation from the Grammarist: “The expression ‘butt of a joke’ goes back to the 1600s, when targets for archery practice were placed upon mounds or butts. Therefore, the phrase “butt of a joke” may be considered interchangeable with the phrase “target of a joke”. The plural form for people who are targeted for humor is butts of jokes. The plural form for many jokes about the same person is butt of jokes.”
Practical jokes could not operate without trust. Think about that. There is a certain implied general trust in each other that we humans operate under: that we can take people at their word, that we can depend on what they tell us to be true, that they won’t intentionally try to deceive us or hurt us. Practical jokes rely on the existence of that implied trust and then they betray it, for the pleasure of amusement gained at another person’s expense.
Trust and betrayal. And then the end of trust.
“I was just joking.”
“Get over it.”
“Can’t you take a joke?”
The targets of practical jokes may move on from it, but they likely won’t ever feel quite the same about the person who betrayed their trust and that is a loss for all of us because everything we do in community is based on a mutual trust in each other. Think about it. Any one person’s loss is also the community’s loss. Trust betrayed is trust not given the next time.
It’s a good question to ask ourselves daily: am I helping to build our trust in each other, or am I chipping away at that trust? #everythingconnects
#journalingalife