Offending People

I don’t know how to make jokes without offending people
And I don’t know if that says more about my personality
Or how trigger happy we are as a society to be triggered
I’ll make jokes about my bipolar mentality
And people will look at me like they don’t know whether to laugh or be horrified
In every group I’ve ever belonged to,
my role is to make everyone waffle between being uncomfortable and being thankful for their relative sanity
And I don’t know if that says more about me or the people I hang out with

I’m terribly good at offending people whose families come from below the border
And it only seems to get worse as I get older
And maybe it’s because I’ve taken to dyeing my hair
Or maybe it’s because the city of Angels is more colorful than the Midwest could ever claim to be
So now there are people that look at me
And think I can speak Spanish
And they’ll talk to me in Spanish
And I have to say “mi español no es muy bueno”
Cause, in Spanish, I don’t know how to say I’m brown,
But not the kind of brown you’re looking for
I could learn it
But I don’t want to offend people
I’m probably already offending people
But it’s different when I’m on a stage and only judged in people’s minds
When someone I’m talking to can judge me in Spanish or English
Or whatever language they so desire
I have no choice but to stand there and burn in the fire I created

I have been scolded for telling a self-deprecating joke because the other party felt like I was saying they were too good for us
Like I didn’t want them to be there
Like I thought they didn’t care
And I had to bite back a scream
Because I didn’t know that you could offend people by being mean to yourself
I wanted to ask if there was anything I could poke fun at
Or would people come after me even if I told a joke about sea anemones
And as I say this out loud
I realize there’s probably an environmentalist in the crowd who’s readying their pitchfork
And there’s another environmentalist who wasn’t but now is
Because I have stuffed them into a box they don’t want any part of

I wonder if I should pass out a paper
And ask people to tally
If they felt offended by me
But most of me doesn’t want to
Because I already know the answer won’t be zero
And I don’t want to see how high it could go
I feel like an angry republican
Yelling about how pc the world has come to be
So I’ve probably lost all the liberals in the crowd
Which on a college campus means I’ve lost the crowd
But since SC is a school for rich white kids
There’s probably a few republicans who were nodding along
But now they’ll add to the tally
Because I have stuffed them into a box they don’t want any part of
So I’ve lost what was left of the crowd
If there was anyone left in the crowd
And I don’t know what it says about me
That I consider that to be a grand success