Moment of connection

I hope this doesn't come off as "look at me, I'm so great" because that's not how it's intended, but rather it's an "This is how I operate and I'm not sure I understand why some people choose to operate in such a different way"

I mean, humor.

After my mammogram this morning* I ran to the bank (And hooray, my summer checks have been direct-deposited. This suggests greater health of my university: when I first started here, it was always the last Friday of the month we got paid, then it changed in 2016 to absolutely the last *day* of the month, now it's back to the last Friday I guess - and I have already paid my bigger bills for the summer (car insurance, a large credit-card bill where I had to put some necessary expenses) so I have a little breathing room)

(*the thing with the BBs-taped-to-your-nipples-as-an-orienting-device will never not be weird and funny to me. Not every place does it but the place I go does. It's also weird and awkward trying to make small talk with a woman you either have never seen before, or don't know well AT ALL (I think it was the same tech as last year) while she's moving your breasts around and getting them in the right orientation for the machine)

Then I went to Pruett's, because we have a potluck at church Sunday, and I figured the simplified version of carne machaca is the best and easiest (not the cheapest, but that's fine, see above) think I can make, and Pruett's has the best beef. (And they reliably carry chuck roast, which is what I use for this).

Anyway, checking out - it wasn't busy - some rock song came on (I forget what it was, I didn't really recognize it) and the man bagging (who might be my age, might be a little older - I think he's actually a manager who lends a hand where needed when he's not busy) started bobbing his head in time to the music and I quipped, "Your store plays better music than most."

And he looked at me with surprise for a moment, and then threw back his head and laughed.

It made my morning. I love saying something funny and having the other person laugh. I love it, in part, because it forges a little connection there. Maybe he'll remember me the next time I walk in. And maybe it made his day a little better. I hope it did. That's one of my goals in life, actually: to try to make the days of people around me a little better when I can.

That's the kind of thing I find....well, for lack of a better term, "lulz" in. Saying something funny and making people laugh. Or sharing a funny cat picture or .gif. Or talking to someone who's having a hard time and maybe helping them see a little of the humor in it. (I have occasionally had colleagues go from angry to chuckling and going, "Yeah, you're right, the situation IS kind of stupid" over something). Because, I don't know...it's partly how I was raised. And I suppose I'm also pretty acutely aware of other people's feelings a lot of the time, and I'd rather have people around me be happy (especially if there's something I can do to make them happier) than sad or angry. I know that won't always work and not everything can be made better, but if I can at LEAST relieve someone's unhappiness for a few minutes by tweeting a cat picture at them, that's worth it.

And that's why I don't get what's sometimes called "griefing," or, the other way people go for "lulz" - by being mean or unpleasant or mocking people or tricking people. I don't know, I can't find humor in something if I feel like I've hurt someone's feelings.

I don't know if it's that the people who do that get a momentary (or permanent) blind spot about it, and they can pretend that the other person ISN'T a person, or they don't care if the person is hurting, but....

Or I don't know if there are some people that that's just their brand of humor and they're not hurt when someone pranks them or is "mean" to them or whatever. But I'm more sensitive than that and if someone pranks me or makes me look foolish or teases me in very specific ways, it does hurt. I may not always react (years of schoolchild taunts taught me that if you can avoid reacting, usually it means you don't get *quite* so much taunting), but I do tend to wander away from the situation and stop interacting.

Or I don't know if it's a dominance thing - that by doing something that makes someone look stupid or foolish or is hurtful to them, you are fundamentally saying "I'm better than you." If that's it, maybe that makes sense to me - one thing I was taught in every Sunday school class I ever had was "no one is better than anyone else" and I got a side-dish of "You're not that great" from the kids at school.

I'd really rather, with my humor, express a sense of....maybe "hey, we're in this thing together" is the best description. So pointing out the absurdity of some situation and getting a laugh from the person, or making a funny statement, or just plain absurd humor (or bad puns. I love puns. I don't care that some people think they're the lowest form of humor; often they contain that tiny element of surprise that tickles something in my brain and makes me laugh).

I dunno. Maybe one way I'm weird is that I tend to look for the "connection" in things - somewhere where I have a shared experience with the other person, or maybe I can say something that makes it a little better for them. I think that's why I find some of ....what I might call "intentional divisiveness" in our culture such a frustrating thing: life is hard enough as it is without being a jerk to other people to make theirs harder.