I cringed internally reading these.
They reminded me of the time when I revisited a convenience store and I noticed that an employée and an investigator were looking at her car together. I tried to amuse her by joking that I broke into her car. She didn’t hear me the first couple of times that I said it, so I repeated myself until the investigator shook his head at me and said ‘It’s not really funny.’ I looked like a deer in the headlights after he told me that. I scurried into the convenience store, got what I wanted, and then got away from it as quickly as possible.
I understood pretty quickly that I only made an ass out of myself by making light of a serious and ongoing situation, and at least I didn’t embarrass myself in front of hundreds or thousands of people. These dullards, on the other hand…