I pretty often second-guess the stuff I choose to put up here. Like, you know, nobody really wants to hear my corny "woke dad" schtick, do they? If I was lucky enough to have been able to, at some point, say something real and powerful and true, am I discrediting those words by not knowing when to shut the fuck up?
When I was eight my best friend didn't look both ways before crossing the street and was hit by a car. He suffered severe neurological damage. When I found out nobody knew for sure whether he was going to live or not. That was a very tough five minutes for me. As soon as my mom told me that he was going to pull through, I started making all kinds of awful, tacky jokes about what had happened. My mom was horrified. She told me that was totally inappropriate.
I don't think it was. That was my way of dealing with the tension and the horror and the hurt. What I said didn't do any harm. It didn't trivialize the suffering he had to go through, which was severe, or the effort of his having to relearn everything he knew. My best friend was alive, and I was happy.
I think it's important for us to be able to continue to express joy, even if the way we go about it is corny and trivial.
