"At Least it's Better Than a Sharp Stick in the Eye"

Our three year old was complaining that something hadn't gone exactly as she'd hoped. At some point I said, "At least it's better than a sharp stick in the eye."

She paused in thought for a moment, then replied, "Everything is better than a sharp stick in the eye!"

My wife and I, over our decades together, have developed a collection of "jokes" that may not exactly make us guffaw any longer, but that we nevertheless return to again and again because, well, they allow us to feel more in control. This is "sharp stick" joke is one of those. I guess it's sort of our version of the advice to "look on the bright side."

Another of our jokes, the one I often call the best joke ever told, is one evoked whenever the pressure is on. All it takes is for one of us to say, "This is the critical phase." We've been telling this joke for some 40 years and it never gets old. We laugh because it reminds us that life is a never-ending series of critical phases, each looming large when resolution is in the future, but appearing as no big deal in hindsight.

I can't tell you how many times a marital spat has been nipped in the bud by one of us having the comedic chops to say, "I'm sure you're right." Try it sometime.

The ability to make light of a bad situation, even cynically or sarcastically or ironically, stands as an unappreciated, but vital social-emotional skill. Obviously, there are often times when a joke is unwelcome or an attempt to deflect the truth, but laughter (or at least a knowing smirk) is often the only thing that prevents us from crying all day. It's, in a way, an extension or corallary to the advice to "pick your battles." 

When a child responds to, say, spilled water with "Oh brother, not again!" or "I did that on purpose," I identify it as this kind of coping device, one I know they've learned from me because those are among the "jokes" I intentionally role model by telling them on myself when I publicly fail or flub. I once pinched my fingertip in a door hinge. When a kid asked me if it hurt, I replied, through the pain, "It's only a flesh wound." Moments later, she repeated the line after a fall on the pavement: "It's only a flesh wound." It didn't change the fact that she needed some first aid, but it did transform the immediate story, in a flash, from tragedy to comedy, because the only real difference between the two is the ending.

I replied our daughter's epiphany about our family joke by saying, "Exactly!" She then proceeded to set her complaint aside for the moment as she joyfully listed all the bad things in life that we're, nevertheless, still better than a sharp stick in the eye: lima beans, spiders, Cruella . . .

Humor in charged moments can be tricky in that it's often perceived as insensitive or dismissive, and it certainly can be, but it also has the power to diffuse, divert, and snap things into perspective in a way that furrowed brows and earnest words often cannot. When we role model humorful responses to our own flaws and flubs, we allow children to see that there are times when it can be an empowering choice to laugh through our tears. When we respond to our own minor set-backs with humor we show children that we can, even in times of difficulty, remain the masters of our own fate, and that with a few words, we can transform ourselves and the moment.

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