Does having different senses of humor cause problems in your family?
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JLeslie (
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September 5th, 2017
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My aunt is very ill. My sister and I have been going through some of her papers to help clean up, and one letter we found was my aunt wrote Hershey’s many years ago stating she heard they were going to change their chocolate formula, and that she hopes they wouldn’t tamper with it. They wrote her back and reassured her they had no plans of doing any such thing.
I thought it was hysterical. My maternal side of my family takes chocolate very seriously. I also thought it was nice that Hershey wrote her back specifically addressing her concern. My sister felt it was another demonstration of how crazy my aunt is.
Another example, my dad once in a very great while (like once every 5–10 years) writes my maiden name, or his sister’s maiden name by accident. His sister thinks it’s a huge insult, completely offensive, and demonstrates he never approved of her husband. That’s all completely ludicrous in my mind. My mom wrote my married last name incorrectly for a few years, I don’t care. She still says it the way she thinks it should be spelled. I don’t care about that either.
I could name many things where I find something funny, and others in the family think it’s just horrible. I feel like people need to lighten up.
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15 Answers
Luckily, our senses of humor are one of the few things my family members have in common. It is something of a bond although other issues divide us.
In the core my sense of humor is pretty harsh at times, so I refrain from using it around 95% of the people in my social circle.
I foresee break-ups if I wouldn’t.
Luckily I can do a light version.
In my family-of-origin, I am the one everybody thinks should “lighten up”. I find their “humor” to be meanness and mockery based, so I don’t think it’s funny at all. This is why I avoid them. They describe me as “humorless” and “oversensitive”.
Your family could benefit a lot by taking things a bit less seriously.
But sometimes people need to accept others’ value system, even if it sounds absurd or stupid.
Seriously, it’s a two-way street. People know others’ boundaries and at the same time adjust themselves. And the compromise comes from understanding. It seems like your family doesn’t understand each other’s viewpoint so much. I’m not saying my extended family does though
One of my brothers has my same sense of humor and it’s great to not have to explain things to him. My other brother has no sense of humor and everything has to be explained to him. It’s exhausting trying to have a conversation with him.
My sense of humor is much sharper and more vulgar than the rest of my family, but I have learned to restrain it when inappropriate, mostly, when we are together. My daughter, however, doesn’t restrain it at all.
A friend once told me “As long as we have her around, we won’t miss you.”
I like extremely dead pan, satirical and irreverent humor (Stephen Wright, The Simpsons, Monty Python, Christopher Guest movies, Arrested Development) and my parents really dislike it. But it’s funny that we all love Seinfeld, a show I would think that my parents would dislike.
It’s never caused problems.
My daughter and I share the same sense of humor and get each other perfectly. I am lucky in that respect. I agree with the lighten up attitude. Some people are so easily offended and have no sense of humor at all.
Example, recently I told someone I know that I was mad the neighbors sheep ate my morning glories off the fence and that I hoped a mountain lion bit her head off during the night. Other person completely missed the sardonic humor and got all ” awww….” on me. Now my daughter and I would have a good laugh over that. Nothing like subversive humor to offset real annoyances.
Humor is in the eye of the beholder.
A good sense of humor, of all kinds, is also a sign of higher intelligence. Many bright people have an offbeat sense of humor that escapes or offends the more mundane types. The easily offended are not candidates for a night at the comedy club.
@rebbel LOL…do you know you resemble Louie CK in your avatar. One of the greats. Either love him or hate him.
“Good”, as related to humor is very subjective. I know people who think they have a “good” sense of humor that is based in bigotry. If someone has to tell me they are funny or they are intelligent, they often are neither.
@canidmajor well no shit…nobody with half an ounce of decency would find humor in bigotry or racist remarks. Stating that intelligent people usually have a good sense of humor is not tooting anyones horn, it is a fact. Intelligent people, in general, have a well developed sense of humor. Don’t shoot the messenger.
I’ll take offbeat and irreverent over stick in the mud, humor of a hall monitor at a school for juvenile delinquents any day of the week.
No. I passed my sense of humor on to my kids, and my dad passed his on to me.
The other day my 3 year old granddaughter was eating a Popsicle, and was struggling with the last bit at the end of the stick.
My son told her to go in from the side. Then he said, “Are you one of those kids who never figured out how to pull the corn dog up the stick?” and then started making gagging noises like he was shoving a stick down his throat. It was really funny!
The next say that same grandchild had an empty cardboard box that she’d put on the wagon and drag over to grammpa going “Special livery!”
I said, to my son, “Special livery? That’s where they shoe horses, don’t they?”
Fortunately he has actually familiar with that old movie from 1963, or had at least heard the title.
And that’s how we roll.
It can back fire in society sometimes, when I’m faced with people who have 0 sense of humor.
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