DEAR SEAN:
My stepson lost his father when he was ten. It’s a long story, and a traumatic one involving suicide. And he’s been coping with it okay, I guess. But the thing is, he makes a joke out of everything, it’s hard to get him to take anything serious.
And the other thing is, I don’t know if I should encourage him to keep acting funny or not. I know he’s hurting inside. I want him to feel like he can talk to me if he needs to, but I can’t get through to him when everything is a big joke.
Sincerely,
CONFUSED IN NASHVILLE
DEAR CONFUSED:
I was twelve the first time someone said I was funny. My father had taken his life only a few months before someone told me that.
I’ll never forget the day someone used those words. I was telling one of my all-time best stories to a group of friends—a tale about wetting my pants in the third grade. It’s a real crowd pleaser.
After my story, Lynn—a girl who the seventh-grade boys considered to be hotter than an oven mitt—told me I was “SO funny.” I almost passed out.
Her words stuck with me for a long time. In fact, you could say they’re still with me.
As it happens, my father had been a funny man before he died. He had a horrible childhood. To cope with this, he became a class clown, a prankster, and a joke-teller.
He was lightning with a joke. He memorized thousands. He could tell stories that made people laugh until they dehydrated. He was the life of parties, jovial, giddy, wild, irreverent, and funny.
But he was none of those things in private.
At home, often he was quiet and sad. Sometimes, he would curl into a ball and cry like a ten-year-old.
Once,…