The Teenage Brain vs The Adult

There were some 'wrong' jokes that were funny when I was a kid. They surprised me or other people, and they were usually horrible. 

But they weren't really real to me. 

Thankfully, there were no videos or online records of the things I did say. I'll have to answer for them one day before my Creator, but they're not being broadcast across the internet in the here and now.

Most teenagers have a limited sense of invulnerability. Bad stuff happens, but it probably won't happen to them at a given moment. With my jokes, I didn't know anyone that they'd happened to in real life and they were, above all, just a joke.

As you get older, the world happens. People who you know or people one step outside your circle go through things that were once funny and are now real. It changes your perspective. It changes what you find 'real.'

I see two main paths people seem to take when the jocularity becomes reality. 

Some change their speech. They avoid the joke, reform the joke, disown the joke.

Others decide it's better to laugh than cry and double-down on the absurdity.

Honestly, you can see this with the "N-word." Many people know it's history and would prefer to eliminate it and the hate it represented. Others want to use it and trivialize it and/or make it their own. I've heard it said, they want to transform the word to have a new meaning.

It's not my job to judge one way or judge another. I have chosen my path and that's for me to walk with fidelity. 

I write this, because I see it a lot at my school. Many of my students make jokes and comments that I find insensitive and/or wrong. I did the same thing at their age. There are some things they say that aren't real to them and their are others that are real they chose to turn into comedy. I look at my main job as communicating to the students I care about who they are and who they are becoming.  If the joke is from a lack of empathy or understanding, I want to increase their knowledge of it. If the joke is from a reaction to something real for them, I want to increase my knowledge of them. 

Recently, there was a threat made online that shut down the school. It turned out the kid who made the threat hadn't meant it and even threatened his own ethnic group. Whether it was planned or impulse, what happened next is a testament to "Once it's out there, it's out there." 

"No takebacks."

A good verse I try to live by (now) is Ephesians 4:29, "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen."