Folks have gotten comfy with saying horrific things to each other on the interweb, using the social buffer as carte blanche to attack, belittle, and insult others with impunity. I needn’t give examples because exposure is omnipresent. The things said are so vile and heartless that in days past if the same was in the physical world chances are you’d get your arse whomped like Damien in Sunday school. Blood would pour, typically after getting socked in the same mouth that vomited the verbal bile.

I’ve had my own experience with just this, both as a kid with no innate sense of self-preservation and as an adult doing comedian things in public.

Here’s an example. Prior to the C19 forced lockdown I’d frequent open mike nights to beta-test odd thoughts to include in future sets. Sometimes I’d launch and entire tale of insight and commentary, sometimes I’d throw out random bits to punctuate these tales. It was one of these random bits that got me in some heat.

Now, truth told and owning said truth, what got me in the crosshairs is a joke that is the absolute worst thing I’ve ever said – no hyperbole – that caused a woman in the front row to bolt into uncontrollable sobbing and a tumultuous egress from the club. And this culminated to her boyfriend waiting for me in the parking lot to “mess me the fuck up” for his best gal having no sense of humor whatsoever.

Yes, it was a cat joke.

So, as alluded, this joke is the worst thing I’ve ever said, and even thinking of it now gives me the creeps. My own joke creeps me out, for whatever expositional worth that might have. And in retrospect I really should have let myself be beat up, but there was this girl sitting at the same table as the humorless sobber and I fell in love with her that night whilst on stage and like hell am I going to display any weakness before my newly located love of my life. Getting beat up was not an option. But I own it. I really deserved to be beat up something firece.

Over a cat joke.

And to be perfectly even on this, while the humorless sobber was the strongest reaction to the worst thing I’ve ever said, it was not a unique sentiment. In a noisy club with alcohol flowing freely, there was an immediately blunt silence. No liquored up comedy fans chatting, no beer bottles clinking, just nothing. Nothing except for one guy towards the back who encapsulated the deadened climate with one word:

“DUUUUUUUDDDDDDDE.”

Even my newly discovered future mother of my comedy spawn was unamused, but it was her friend (turned out to be her sister) who jetted out of the club in tears, so I already had strike #1 on the board.

Because of a cat joke.

About that. Cat enthusiasts