Bleak humor right at the edge of being wrong has kept me alive, so it's wound up in my work. Asked by my sister why I was assaulted as a child but she wasn't, I quipped, "Maybe you're not cure enough" -- which takes one of the darkest events of my life and tries to turn it into a putdown for somebody else. Talk about grim. To chirp my story like some bouncy cheerleader would be a lie. That grimness has to make it in. -- Mary Karr from The Art of Memoir.
This is why I think serious, scary things shouldn't ever be sacrosanct. We've reached a point in culture now where conversation can be effectively shut down by claiming "harm," while forgetting that for some people, grim humor is a primary -- and beneficial -- coping mechanism.
