Laugh Like You're Dumb

The raven stared down upon the two hillbilly gangsters like a judge in his bench giving a lengthy prison sentence. The wasteland was the perfect place to dispose of a dead body since nobody came out here and the heat would cause the corpse to decompose faster. The only witnesses to this crime were the stoic raven and the leafless tree it stood upon. The two rednecks used shovels to dig a shallow grave for their fallen victim: a beautiful young girl in a bloodstained white dress. Even in death, she still had ropes bound around her body and duct tape over her mouth, the latter of which prompted one of the murderers to tell a joke.

“Hey, Billy-Bob, how do you start a conversation about rape? Peel the tape off of the victim’s mouth!” The sociopaths weren’t the only ones who got a good chuckle out of it. A college student named Daniel Jason let out an uncomfortably long hyena howl to where his ribs and back were both aching. And then everything went black and a pause symbol manifested itself on the screen.

The classroom lights went up and Daniel was slowly coming down from his laughter spell. The entire class, including the elderly teacher Jonathan McAvoy, stared at him with fire in their eyes and downward eyebrows. As the final few chuckles departed from Daniel’s belly, the blond-haired frat boy looked around and shrugged his shoulders. “What? What’s everyone looking at me for?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Jason, why is everybody looking at you?” asked the white-haired and fuzzy-bearded Mr. McAvoy rhetorically. “Would somebody like to explain to him why we’re all staring at him in disbelief? Oh, Miss Miller, how about you?”

“Sure, I’d love to,” said the short pink haired Christie Miller. She cleared her throat and said, “You know, Daniel, the reason we’re all staring holes into you right now is because you laughed at something nobody ever should. There’s nothing funny about rape or murder. It’s demoralizing, it’s traumatizing, and it’s the most violent thing you could do to another human being.”

“Give me a break, lady!” said Daniel while throwing his hands up defensively. “Why do you feminists have to ruin everything for the rest of us? We can’t laugh at anything anymore because it might be offensive to someone else. What happened to us? What the hell’s going on here?!”

“I’ll tell you what’s going on,” said Mr. McAvoy as he walked up to Daniel’s desk and placed his palms on the surface while glaring at his student. “This isn’t about political correctness or artistic license. Over the years, some of us, not you included, have learned a simple philosophy that everyone should adopt: basic human decency. In other words, we’re supposed to treat each other like we ourselves want to be treated. Suppose a real life rape victim heard you laughing at that joke. Then what? Are they just supposed to ‘cowboy up’ and take it?”

“Yes! You’re damn right they should!” shouted Daniel back at his teacher, who then backed up a few steps. “I don’t have to dumb down my sense of humor just because there are pussies and wusses in this room! Nobody tells me what I can and can’t laugh at!”

Christie shot up from her seat and retorted, “Fine! Then you don’t get to tell the rest of us what to laugh at either! That means if you slip on a banana peel and smash your head open on the floor, the entire class is allowed to laugh at you because that would pretty much be the same thing as America’s Funniest Home Videos!”

Daniel chuckled sarcastically and said, “Please. You’re missing the whole point of America’s Funniest Home Videos, Crusty. They’re funny because they’re happening to somebody else. Of course it wouldn’t be funny if it happened to me.”

“Congratulations, Mr. Jason, you’ve proven to everyone in this class that you’re not capable of having empathy for others,” said the film studies teacher as he folded his arms. “You know who else doesn’t have empathy for others? Bullies, serial killers, rapists, animal abusers, basically the entire sewage system of our society. You wouldn’t happen to be one of those people, would you, Mr. Jason?”

Daniel scrunched his face and shrugged his shoulders in confusion while saying, “What the hell are you talking about?! Laughing about rape isn’t the same as condoning it! I don’t go around raping random women because I want a good laugh!”

“I’d really like to believe that, Daniel,” said Christie in a low, but tense voice. “I’d like to believe that you’re just a good person with a twisted sense of humor. Those people do exist. But then I go back to the other things you’ve said today, about how feminists are ruining everything and victims of abuse should just toughen up. How are any of us supposed to trust you knowing what kind of stances you take?”

“And just so you know, Daniel,” said Mr. McAvoy. “Feminists aren’t ruining anything in this country. If it wasn’t for them, women wouldn’t have the right to vote, they wouldn’t have the right to divorce their husbands, they wouldn’t have the right to embark on their own careers, basically, they’d still be second class citizens. In some ways, they still are and it’s all because of people like you who perpetuate that ignorant attitude we’re supposed to be fighting.”

During the last few seconds where he was being berated, Daniel sat at his desk looking down at his shoes while his anger boiled over in the form of shaking and heavy nose breathing. He finally pounded the desk with open palms and shouted, “That’s it! I’ve had just about all I can take of you stupid bastards! I’m leaving! If you’ll all excuse me, I’m going to the cafeteria to cool down! I’m going to eat a ham sandwich and watch Anthony fucking Jeselnik on my iPhone! And if none of you like that, you can all go straight to hell! Fuck you guys, I’m out of here!”

Daniel shoved his desk to the ground and flipped the entire class the double birds before picking up his backpack and stomping out of the classroom. “Don’t plan on coming back!” yelled Mr. McAvoy before he received an extra middle finger from the hissy-fit-throwing frat boy.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m really sorry about Mr. Jason’s behavior,” said Mr. McAvoy. “I’ll make sure he’s never allowed to set foot on this campus ever again. We don’t need that kind of ignorance in a place that’s supposed to be about education.”

“No!” yelled Christie while holding up a flat palm. After a brief moment of silence, she said, “Don’t expel him just yet. He may be a sexist pig, but he’s not completely without empathy. If you’ll all excuse me…I’m going to go give him some!”

It had been a whole half hour since Daniel Jason stormed out of Jonathan McAvoy’s film studies class. The frat boy sat at a table in the cafeteria by himself munching on a ham sandwich and watching dark comedian Anthony Jeselnik on his iPhone, just like he said he would. Every demented joke to come out of Anthony’s mouth made Daniel chuckle with delight and forget about the humiliation he suffered in the classroom.

And then the familiar throat-clearing sound got his attention. He looked up from his iPhone and saw Christie Miller standing across the table from him and smiling while waving. “Jesus H. Christ, Christie, what do you want? Are you here to tell me that I just offended a bunch of Christians by saying Jesus H. Christ? Those religious assholes say it all the time and nobody gives them shit about it.”

Still with a roguish smile on her face, Christie brushed her dyed pink hair back and said, “Relax, big boy, I’m not here to chastise you. I just wanted you to meet my new best friend. He’s into the same things you are and you two would really hit it off. Maybe you could let him into your little fraternity.”

Daniel suddenly felt a hard slap on his broad right shoulder as a muscular black arm was wrapped around him in an affectionate way. Daniel gulped a huge wad of saliva and shook nervously as he saw the big black football player standing over him with a seductive grin on his face. “Now hold on there, partner!” said the black dude. “Your ass is about to get some sweet Texas loving!”

The frat boy stared into his offender’s eyes with horror on his face and a quivering lip. He could barely get out a frail, “Uh-oh” before he shot up from his seat and tried to bolt out of the cafeteria in one piece. He didn’t get too far. He banged his knee on one of the tables and collapsed to the ground holding his knee, prompting everybody in the cafeteria, Christie and her “new friend” included, to laugh until their ribs ached.

“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” yelled Daniel as he rolled around on the ground clutching his knee. They didn’t shut up. They grew louder in their donkey laughs, causing him to have a tear roll down his cheek.

As soon as Christie and her new friend got their back-splitting laughter out of their systems, the pink-haired student pulled out her wallet and handed the football stud a wad of twenty dollar bills. “Keep your money, baby,” he said. “That kid’s sweet little ass is payment enough!”