What Surprises me

The other day a friend said to me “You always look so surprised when he is sarcastic!”  The “he” in this case was my 18 year old and the occasion was communicating about a ride home while discussing what he had/n’t eaten at the church buffet.  He had his mouth full of salad and was attempting to have me understand that he’d eaten only salad and was staying for awhile after the buffet.  Sarcastically.  And with plenty of "tone".

I responded to my friend “It’s not so much the sarcasm that surprises me. It’s the disrespect and contempt that does.”  Four children later – another unfinished project, btw – I have never quite learned to shield myself from the pain of the insolence and nastiness that is the teenage idea of sarcasm.  

I get sarcasm.  I get playful teasing, giving someone a hard time, flicking them “crap”, yanking their chain, etc.  My father ribbed me for years (until he died) and I developed a partially thick skin and learned to give it back as well.  My kids are blessed (or cursed) with a great sense of humor, a quick wit, a sharp intelligence and a pretty good sense of comedic timing.  It’s hard to have a serious conversation in our house without any one of us poking or jabbing in a smart-mouth comment or two.

But there is a tone of disrespect that I’ve never been able to see as funny.  I was a “normal” teenager and gave my mother a good share of disrespect in my day, but she was oh-so-quick to snuff it out and punish it into oblivion – at least until I was banished to my room and muttered more under my breath so she couldn’t hear me.  Because, if I’d continued to say what my teenage mouth wanted to say (without connecting with my yet-to-be-adult brain), she would have had no problem taking off her shoe and smacking my posterior until it stung.  This by the way, was not child abuse, it was discipline.  I do not have an irrational fear of rubber-soled moccasins because of it; only a huge respect for my 5 ft. 2 mother who didn’t hesitate to reprimand me when it was necessary – no matter how tall I was.  Apparently, my children do not have the same amount of healthy fear/respect for me or my shoes (or the ruler).  They just continue to toss out the zingers until they’ve dug the hole so deeply that my Irish (not to mention my Italian) comes out fighting.

And, although this phase, too, shall pass; sometimes the adult “child” never distinguishes the tone difference between sarcasm and disrespect.  I listen to adults who have a biting sense of “humor” and who actually think it’s funny when people wince at their sharp attempts at humor.  Or that person who always has a mean intonation when they comment but then follow it up with a smile or a laugh (or a smiley face electronically) as if that softens the blow of the words.

 

I can hardly wait until my children have children of their own and have their disrespect thrown back in their faces.  I hope they’re better at deflecting it than I am.