5th Grade Sarcasm: A Flashback

Growing up I had parents who were ninjas when it came to the use of sarcasm and humor. They always appeared to be funny without error. My dad tended to be more dry and crude with his delivery. My mom was a fan of using word play and cunning observations about people and situations. As my role models for sarcastic humor, I feel like I inherited a pretty even combination of both aspects.

Studies show kids can start detecting sarcasm around 6-8 years old and start understanding and using sarcasm between 10-12 years old. As a child, I was an early bloomer in using sarcasm. I'm not sure if that had more to do with genetics, environment or occasionally falling in with the crowd of the smart ass bad kids. 

A shining of example of my budding understanding of sarcasm was in the 5th grade. It was the end of the school year. My elementary school did pioneer themed activities for the last few weeks where you dressed as old-timey 19th century folk. Other activities involved playing old games that the pioneers would have had, making your own butter, and making your own toys. It was fun for the most part, but there was a lot of unfun labor involved. Now I get they were trying to show what it was like to live like a pioneer back then. But holding the attention of four 5th grade classes combined is impossible. A school gym full of hyper 11 year olds is no place to show kids how to make their own butter over the course of 3 days (Which was just shaking buttermilk and a handful of marbles in a jar for hours.) At one point, we had to make our own toy. The toy of choice was the Jacob's ladder. If you're not familiar with the toy, here is a picture. You're probably familiar with it. 

Basically you fold it up, hold it at one end and the unfolds in kind of a fun way. To accomplish this, they gave us all 12 blocks of wood that were intentionally 2 inches too big. So we had to sand them all down by hand symmetrically. If you're not familiar with the process of sanding something by hand with a strip of sandpaper, I recommend you find out. You'll be bored and frustrated in the first 30 seconds. Now force this process onto an 11 year old and see how long it takes them to complain of boredom. (I'm guessing that number would now be measured in nanoseconds with all the cell phones and tablets and what not rotting attention spans.) As me and a few friends started the project, we very quickly jumped to the conclusion that this was fucking stupid. Sanding? At school? How was manual labor supposed to be fun? I remember very distinctly being surrounded by the bad kids that I admired. I wished I was more like them. I wanted to be their friend and impress them. But I was historically very shy so I rarely said much. But that day I was feeling particularly daring. I had people to impress. I started to loudly remark "Wow, this is a blast! I sure do like sanding wood. I hope there is more sanding to do this week." It caused all the kids around me to laugh and start copying the phrase "this is a blast!" The teachers were less than thrilled with my grasp of sarcasm. They were even less thrilled to see that the concept had started to spread through the kids faster than herpes at a whorehouse. Soon all the kids were sarcastically remarking how much fun they were having. I'm guessing not all of them grasped why it was irritating to the teachers or funny to us. Some were just copying just to copy. 

I was on a roll and wasn't about to stop. I took it a little bit further by remarking how I wished I could sand at home and not just at school. I childishly snickered that I wanted to be a professional sander when I grew up. Kids laughed. I laughed. For about 5 minutes I was funny, seemingly outgoing and popular. But like any good dictatorship knows, if you take out the leader of any revolution it will quell the rebellion. The teachers quickly singled me out as the cause of the sarcastic uprising and took me to another room. I panicked. It was the first time I had ever gotten in trouble like this. My teacher lectured me heavily about being disappointed since I had never gotten in trouble before. I held back the tears and apologized for my insolence. 

My teacher forgave me and allowed me to return to my classmates. As I returned, the other kids looked eager for my return. Perhaps they were hoping I would lead them to a new era of smart ass comments that went beyond the words "booger" and "poop". But alas, I was subdued and defeated. Once my peers figured out that my spirit had been broken to speak out again, we all went back to quietly sanding.