I'm a C***! You're a C***! We're ALL C***S!

My first boss was a c***.

A self-confessed c***.

We were making adverts for local radio stations and sometimes we'd forget to fax scripts to customers, mess up a phone number or let the wrong commercial go to air on the wrong day. And whenever something like that happened my boss would go to our Sales Director and say:

 "Yes, we've f***ed up. It's a total f***ing nightmare. I'm a daft c***".  

For him, this was completely logical: admit a mistake and call yourself the worst word imaginable - that way you could avoid a bollocking. He'd sit at his desk and nod wisely; 

"What more can they do to me? I've called myself a c*** - they can't say anything worse than that. They can put a snotty letter in my personnel file but that's just a posh way of calling me a c***!"

  He didn't seem to worry about getting sacked - he just wanted to make sure that nobody else got to call him a c***.

To be fair, my boss said everybody was a c*** - it was just a question of how much of a c*** you were. Maybe he took pride in being the right sort of c*** (a funny c***) but he had to deal with lying c***s (sales-people) stupid c***s (the general public) and the biggest c***s in the universe (company directors). 

But that couldn't be right, could it? It was just a joke. Surely the world wasn't a seething mass of complete c***s? 

About ten years ago I was in a psychotherapy group. I was always getting into trouble for laughing. I'd be talking about losing my job, being bullied at school or getting beaten up by a family member - but every sentence would end with a little chuckle. The therapist would look terribly concerned and then ask me why I couldn't talk about painful events without laughing.  I didn't laugh at things other people talked about in the group - it was only when I talked about things that had happened to me.

"Why are you laughing?" the therapist would say, "you're talking about a serious, life changing event. Where is your emotional response to these events?"

There were several boxes of tissues placed strategically around the room so he must have been expecting everybody to end up in tears at some point, but I couldn't stop my little chuckles. 

I tried to explain why I was laughing:  

1: Laughter is the best medicine (and maybe horrible memories aren't so painful if you laugh at them). 

2: If I wasn't laughing I'd be crying. Did the therapist have a point? Was I avoiding painful emotions? Would I have to force myself to cry just to shut him up?

3: I genuinely found some bad times funny - just because some of them were so ridiculous. I'd had a psychiatrist fall asleep and take me to a betting shop in the same appointment - how else are you supposed to react to crap like that? 

 But I also thought about my first boss. He called himself a c*** before anybody else had the chance to. Was I doing the same thing? Was I laughing at myself before anybody else could? Was this a pre-emptive chuckle?

How bad would it be if people laughed at your innermost thoughts and fears? 

What if you sat down and told your closest family members, your friends or your partner exactly how you were feeling - and they didn't believe you? What if they just didn't want to hear about it? 

You'd never risk saying anything to anybody ever again, not without trying to protect yourself in some way. You'd have to, wouldn't you? 

 Or maybe I'm just a c*** - a c*** who laughs at inappropriate moments. 

And maybe my boss was right and that's the best way to cope with it all:

Decide what kind of c*** you are and own it.