RankFamily Archives: August 2004
Thursday, August 12, 2004
I thought I'd pass along a letter I wrote to a friend who made an off-color joke about Parkinson's disease in a joke session I was in on. He wrote me the following day to express a concern that he may have offended me by making light of a serious affliction. I tried to express to him that my attitude towards my serious affliction not only admits opportunities for levity, it solicits them. Also, I hope I conveyed the concept that being overly sensitive about my illness, and in so doing artificially attenuating your personality, is a type of exclusion (for me). And no one likes to be left out...
In my perspective, [the joke] wasn't out of line at all. I'd heard the joke before I got sick and laughed at it then. I enjoyed it last night. I handle my predicament with humor—and specifically by making fun of myself—all the time. Every time someone I know chokes or sputters on a drink, I always say "You must've caught my ALS!" It's reflex now. My favorite was when I was with my dad in Houston, and we met another ALSer with mush mouth (non-technical term). My rate was still good, but pronunciation was moderately degraded, which is the way we all talk when we want to sound "touched in the head". Anyway, his speech was just noticeably worse than mine. After a brief exchange with him, when we were out of earshot, I dramatically shook my head and said (in my dumb-sounding voice), "Man, someone ought to tell that guy he sounds like a f**kin' retard!". Runner up is when I started into a faux sharing session with my brother, and after a couple of "I miss doing X"s or "I'm concerned about Y"s, I drew a deep sigh, and said regretfully, "It shoulda been you." He and I laughed for five minutes.
I should be able to get something out of this disease, and comedic currency is fine with me. There are many things wrong with me, and the fact that I can derive satisfaction from the joke opportunities this disease offers is probably one of those things. I'm sure there is a line that could be stepped across, but you were no where near it last night. Not even in the ballpark; in fact, not even the right sport. So don't modify the way you normally act or the things you would normally say on my account. That's worse than any foot in the mouth. I have to deal with the challenge of getting the real me out through this defective communication medium (my increasingly useless body). I sure don't want to deal with having to extract the real Thurber from some guy tiptoeing around imagined social pitfalls and modifying his behavior because of me. Now, don't get me wrong, I still want you to carry my equipment. (That was a joke, but not really.) But don't withhold the real you because of my situation. If you do, I'll have to wait till I fully recover until I get to know the real you. If I'm not going to like you, I want to not like you now, not wait until I get better and then not like you. (That was a joke, but not really.) The fact is <homophobicDiscomfort>I like you a lot</homophobicDiscomfort>, and the fact you wrote to own the consequences of your joke just solidifies that.
I know you have to check for boundaries, and I do think that in some ways it can be just as hard for the people watching me go through this as it is for me. I know we're not (yet!) at the level of familiarity that permits free exchange of every comic prospect, like, say, Ben and I are. But there's only one way to get there, and I'll let you know if you tread on my tooties. Probably by blubbering like a despondent, morbidly obese, just-wedgied schoolboy. (That was a joke, but not really.) So thanks for the note, please don't sphincter up when I joke about my disease, and feel free to join in if and when it feels right for you.
[Editor's note: I don't have any (non-imaginary) friends named Thurber. I changed his name b/c I didn't tell him I was posting this.]
Posted by joe @ 01:30 PM CST