How does One Prioritize Chaos? Part II: “Help, I’m drowning and I can’t get up!”

You know, sometimes I feel a tad guilty using that line in jokes. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s off of a commercial which makes it fair game but still, the original version has an elderly woman who’s fallen on the floor and can’t get up. That particular situation isn’t a joke, that really happens. People have died because of situations like that.

Okay, so why do I use that phrase in jokes if I sometimes feel guilty about it? Gallows humour for one thing. And I utilize gallows humour because I identify with whatever it is that I’m making jokes about for another.

Let’s go back to Grammy in the commercial who first spoke that particular line. Obviously she’s tripped on the carpet, the cat, the drunken grandson who lives with her who’s more than useless while passed out on the floor (hell, even when he’s conscious) or maybe she tripped over air, it doesn’t matter. One way or another it’s not that she’s an old woman who’s crying out in a shaky voice that makes it funny for me. It’s that I identify with a human being who finds her/himself suddenly vulnerable and aware of the equally sudden inability to help oneself in a situation. And it makes it both humiliating and even more frightening because it’s a situation that has always been benign/manageable/no big deal before!

Now why the hell would that be funny? Because I’ve been there and I hate it and I’m aware that it will happen to me again and I don’t want to face all that. Especially since the anticipation of something that could happen has a tendency to turn me into stone before it has a chance to happen. I make myself vulnerable in the present by anticipatory fear.

You know what else? Just because I’m afraid of something doesn’t mean it will happen.

This is part of how I understand my perpetual state of chaos in the day to day, moment to moment of my life. For whatever reasons I’ve learned early on and have always had as an undercurrent in myself that just being alive is dangerous. Just waking up in the morning and going about my own business, my own life, puts me physically, emotionally, financially, mentally, professionally, whatever at risk for all sorts of Burmese tiger traps, big and small.

So hence my affection for gallows humour; I can’t fully escape my fear (or life for that matter, try as I might) so it’s a mechanism to help me function to some degree.

You know what I just realized? I just explained the tag line under my blog title. When I first put that in there it was mainly a smart ass remark that I thought poked fun at my perpetual desire to sound profound. I also recognized back then that it was an honest statement mainly because I’ve found that humour isn’t funny unless it follows a truth.

Dammit! See what I mean about another layer of the onion always getting peeled back? Even though I know something’s an “onion”, even though I can see the meat of the onion under each translucent layer, upon it being peeled back something more is uncovered.

Excuse me while I go reach for some Saran Wrap.