Just for Shits & Giggles?
Whether we call it gallows, morbid, or dark humour, these jokes are probably something you commonly hear, and likely use yourself, to diffuse stressful situations in service. Even if you have transitioned out of uniform, it is still something you likely use as a Veteran. Sometimes life moves us to tears, but what would life be without laughter?
Our humour can be an important mechanism we use not only to manage intense situations in the present but memories of the past. However, in this age of outrage, we need to make sure we are navigating civvy street carefully. Others outside our cultures of service might not understand these jokes and take them wildly out of context.
Taming the Terrifying
Many of us likely have examples of jokes made at the dinner table, followed by awkward silence. This humour often requires a perspective developed by experiences many do not understand. Exposure to experiences considered too painful, if not completely unimaginable, to endure or discuss. We often use this humour to help disarm what might be debilitating to others. Certainly, the right joke, to the right people, at the right time might not only be clever and hilarious, but necessary. It might be what is needed to embrace the suck and carry on in the moment, or introduce something that plagues the mind afterwards.
— It might be what is needed to embrace the suck and carry on in the moment, or introduce something that plagues the mind afterwards.
If we cannot occasionally laugh at life, it can quickly become an overwhelming experience when service takes the sane and throws them into insane places.There is often little time to recover after a call before being sent to another. From personal experience, sometimes it was that dark joke that helped to create that change from pessimism into the optimism needed to keep going.
— If we cannot occasionally laugh at life, it can quickly become an overwhelming experience when service takes the sane and throws them into insane places
This is not only important for the health of individual members but the moral of the crew, fireteam, or squad. These jokes can often help us cope by bringing us closer together with those who get it. Given many of the risks associated with service, there is deep importance in feeling a shared sense of belonging to something greater than these risks.
— These jokes can often help us cope by bringing us closer together
However, despite the important place dark humour has for many of us, maintaining situational awareness is critical. For example, while you are on scene, someone might be recording you on their smartphone. Remember, what you call service, many see merely as a spectacle. Even something that might seem as innocuous as a comment made on a text or over the telephone can be taken the wrong way.
Laughing Through It
— People often judge what they do not understand, and what is not understood is often considered offensive.
Whether it is the memories of what cannot be unseen or the harsh realities you still face with boots on the ground, our dark humour has its place in service as a First Responder and is something we continue to appreciate as Veterans. It can be the way we disarm the power of overwhelming experiences or a mechanism we use to talk about it, rather than avoided it. However, people often judge what they do not understand, and what is not understood is often considered offensive.
