Soooo, I was sitting on The Kid again last night – the same one as last week. And it has now become abundantly apparent that 6 year olds do not understand sarcasm. Nor are they fabulous with hyperbole. After that light bulb moment (funny story: she actually turned on the light above my head as I was thinking this) I realized I have no idea how to communicate outside of sarcasm and extreme exaggeration.
People had mentioned this to me in the past but I had always brushed it off as either not being true or being completely irrelevant. I can be sincere. Really I can. But why would I want to be? Sarcasm is a way of life, a calling. It’s my joie de vivre! My raison d’etre! Can you imagine a life without sarcasm? I sure can’t. (Apparently I can be sincere but I can’t even write without hyperbolic embellishment…)
So for approximately 2 hours last night I had to converse in a more conventional (read boring) manner. I think I kind of failed. It ended up being a lot of hand gestures and non-verbal communication. Without sarcasm I’m apparently at a loss for words. Meh. I’m not too worried about it though. I only poked myself in the eye once so it was a good night. (My non-verbal communication tends to involve some violent flailing of the extremities. Hyperbole of the arms, if you will. C’est la vie.)
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Haha! I have a hard time communicating with kids, too. I have been called mean. It’s not mean! They just don’t understand!
When you said you “were sitting on The Kid” I thought you were riding a 6-year old horse. No wonder the Kid didn’t understand sarcasm, most horses don’t. Then I realized you were talking about a human kid. Duh.
But, I do think my Lusitano mare understands sarcasm, at least the tone of voice used with it. She is SO smart, which is said of all Iberian horses, Lusitanos and Andalusians.
I, too, am unable to communicate with kids. That’s why we have horses. HORSES can understand sarcasm.
“But, I do think my Lusitano mare understands sarcasm”
Of course she does, Lusitanos are wicked smart as well as gorgeous looking. you may have guessed by my reply that I have a Lusi too. sometimes I think he’s alittle too smart for my own good
I have the same problem…..and can barely converse with a non-horse person, in any language.
Every conversation I have eventually contains some reference to horses (at least in my head… I have nearly exploded many times trying NOT to make some reference to horses when around certain friends who I know really don’t care and are kind of sick of me talking about them…). God help anyone around me if I get into a conversation with a horse person, because any conversation I have with them will, inevitably, become solely about horses, and it will take hours before we move on.
You sound so much like me. Complete with flailing arms around uselessly when I don’t know what I’m trying to say.
I do manage to get my act together around kids though (which is good, since I teach piano lessons to a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old), and around my grandmother (who could not recognize sarcasm, hyperbole, or just jokes in general if her life depended on it), but the rest of the time…
I fall asleep in my soup when talking to non-horse people. They go on and on about their boring job, their boring house, their boring car, and their boring life, while I try to at least try to look interested. While they yamer on and on, I am secretly thinking about working on that flying lead change, is that new supplement helping to make my horse healthier, and running through my next dressage test in my head. Every one in awhile, I nod my head and say, “Ah ha.” but if you aren’t taking “horse”, you’ve completely lost my attention.
Sarcasm isn’t so much a system of communication in my family, it is a way of life. I’ve been fluent in Sarcasm since a very early age. My 10.5 year old son has quite an understanding of Sarcasm, as he has been raised in an English/Sarcasm household.
My dogs, however, being the pragmatists they are, generally cast a jaundiced eye in my direction during bouts of extreme Sarcasm. I flip them off in return.
A life without sarcasm? *gasp* OH, THE HORROR! Just the hought of it makes me shudder…
Sarcasm is the next step in the evolution of the English language. It is simply natural selection. Eventually the mighty sarcasm will win over feeble “normal speak” and come to dominate not just the impressionable minds of the West, but the entire world. It will amalgamate with that Holy Grail of British wit, the irony, to form an unstoppable mass of uber-communication, known only as the SNARK.