Finding Courage in Laughter
Code for Hosting:
//static.inlinkz.com/cs2.js?v=116
Code for Link:
http://goo.gl/FJpScR>get the InLinkz code
”
I first became aware of him when his television show Titus was on Fox. I was working for Community Mental Health at the time and the first show I saw was the one where his mentally ill mother tried to kill his father.
Yes, it was a comedy.
How come Mom is crazy and I’m not? Well, it’s possible my mom could stand up in front of this many people and talk about all the crap in her life and those people could have sat around and laughed with her, it would’ve meant nothing and she could have moved on cool. It’s also possible she could have taken out the whole front row with a large-caliber weapon.
I know people who were deeply offended by Titus’ irreverence, but most of my coworkers (social workers) thought it was hilarious, because while exaggerated, it was totally truthful. Several us were there that morning when a client put his meds in the coffee and several staff members had trouble staying awake for a while. Some of my coworkers had experienced clients threatening them with harm. The substance abuse wing of the agency saw resonance with some of their own experiences. Titus stopped drinking at 17 after he fell into a bonfire, which he calls a “one step program”. My husband Brad could see himself in some of the “risk-taking for beer” antics of Titus’ remembered youth.
I finally stopped drinking when I hit seventeen years old. Yes, imagine the f*ckup I must have been. Stopped drinking because it isn’t really good for your health.…and I fell into a bonfire! Yeah, you’re done drinking then. You don’t need AA. Falling into a bonfire is a one-step program.
Most of us don’t have the sort of courage with our past that allows us to air our family skeletons on stage. Fact is, many of us won’t air our family skeletons in our own heads for an audience of one. Generally you can tell these folks because they’re deeply offended by Christopher Titus, but they’re also shocked when my husband Brad makes an ironic observation about his extremely dysfunctional family of birth. They don’t understand why he would laugh at some of the things he laughs at, but more, they’re shocked that he would and they think it’s wrong. “That’s not funny. What is wrong with you?”
I believe life is about balance. My mom was brilliant, yet manipulative. Beautiful, but had more voices in her head than the Wu-Tang Clan. Loves her kids, killed her last husband. I say “last husband” because you don’t get another one after that.
Again, I’m not going to call Christopher Titus a hero because in my experience, the quickest way to kill courage is to label it heroism, but he’s brave in that area and that’s worth applauding because far too often we take life so very seriously, as if our tears could change it, when if we opted for a little levity, we might not change our circumstance, but we would certainly change our attitude. People who don’t know me are under the impression that I’ve had an easy life. They would be wrong. I’m certainly not as funny as Christopher Titus, but I do subscribe to the idea that if it hurts and you can’t fix it, you might has well turn it into a funny quip.
My mom was a manic depressive schizophrenic who, after a year in prison, went home and shot herself. My sister, Shannon, an amazing poet, who was raised by this woman, and was dating a guy who broke up with her for the fourth time in three weeks. And one day, she came to his house, got a gun, and blew her brains out all over his headboard. I just went through a divorce, five years in court and cost me $2 million dollars. If anyone, by law, should be forced to take antidepressants it’s me…But instead, I choose to be an antidepressant. And you can take me with alcohol.
