the alchemy of new jokes
So there's a joke where a mayor, a priest, and an engineer all go golfing together, but they sit around waiting the entire morning because the guy before them is taking ages, until eventually they can't take it anymore and they ask the steward what is going on, and the steward says well you see the guy before you is a firefighter who lost his sight on the job, it's very sad, he's always been an avid golfer in this club and we know he's trying, he comes in every week with some new idea as to how he can not take so long and delaying everyone with his teeing off, so we usually all let him go first and that's why it's taking so long. The mayor listens to this and says how sad, I will name a street after him; the priest listens to this and says how sad, I will pray for him; the engineer listens to this and says well then why doesn't he just play at night? and everybody laughs.
So there's a joke where a firefighter loses his sight on the job, and it's very sad, all he's ever wanted to do was to be helpful and help people, and now he's blind and he worries that he isn't actually helping people anymore and that in fact he is a net importer of help, people are inconvenienced by him, and he hates being blind but he doesn't even remember what it was like to be able to see, golfing has been really difficult for a while now, and he's incredibly vexed by this but he doesn't really know what to do about it when other golfers tell him things that he should obviously do to improve at his swing and he wants to do them but he's blind, he doesn't know how, and he comes up with all these ideas to compensate for his blindness or for being an inconvenience to others because he doesn't want to make a fuss or be trouble to anyone, it frustrates him too, but he can't help it, because: blind; he comes in to his regular golf happy that this exists in his life and sad that he can't appreciate or improve on it the way people not blind can, happy to try something new that he thinks will return some appreciation or ability of golf to him and/or reduce the inconvenience he's inflicting on others by inflicting his blindness on them unwittingly, and behind him is a mayor, a priest, and an engineer.
The mayor, the priest, and the engineer get more and more irate that they're missing their tee-off time, and the firefighter is too embarrassed to tell them that he's puttering about in the dark, lost and confused, he doesn't want to delay them either, it's just that the method that he's trying to return to golfing normally isn't working but he doesn't know why because: blind, and he doesn't want to make a fuss, he just doesn't know what to do, and then the club steward comes around and explains his situation to them and the first one says how sad, he'll name a street after you and that's not what you want, you don't want recognition, you want to not be blind, and the second one says how sad, he'll pray to God for you and that's not what you want, you don't want pity, and the third one says well why doesn't he just play at night? and you feel foolish because like an idiot that never even occurred to you, you must be a fool, it realises in a very definite way the inconvenience you put on others just by existing, and it also stings a little because it means accepting your blindness as just this immutable part of who you are now, you are an inconvenience now, and then everybody laughs and you have to laugh too because if you don't you're just the angry blind man mad at the world and his blindness, and everybody laughs. You're not the joke, your blindness is not the butt of the joke, but it sure feels like it, but you have to laugh because you're not that blind, but then again if you laugh then it's kind of like admitting that there's something of you that is laughable, so you laugh: at yourself and at your self and then you go home and you shoot yourself, and that's that. Joke's over.