From the ages of 5 yrs old to 25 yrs old I had a deeply routed love of sarcasm. A good friend once told me I was like a Superhero of this art and dubbed me Sarcastia Morbida. I’d like to say I had mastered it but I’m too modest for that sort of boast so I’ll just say I had truly fine tuned my skills. It was spawned, like I said around 5 yrs old, when my father was murdered (but that’s a whole other story) which seemed to indicate it was a sort of coping mechanism. First thought I had back then, there is no god. I was pissed, everybody gets a dad but me, fine, screw you god or lack there of.

For me it was a way to laugh at the ugly parts of life, embrace them, chew them up and sort of say, ‘ok what else ya got?’ I remember being about 10yrs old when a friend of mines mom screamed at me, “Sarcasm is just a form of hostility!” She was a psycho religious nut that thought I was the devil, or at the very least going to hell, because my family is Jewish. Ahh love thy neighbor. In retrospect maybe she wasn’t all wrong about my hostility. My mom had remarried an utter ass and things were pretty glum. Still, I thought I was funny, people laughed and that made everything go down a little easier.

I was called a bitch plenty during my High School career. I felt it was mainly by dumb ass jocks that didn’t understand my vocabulary and were ticked off by my total lack of fluttering eyelashes in their presence so I never took it to heart. My sarcasm by then was quite biting and I embraced the bitch persona, wanna call me a bitch? Sure I’ll show ya a bitch. But things didn’t stay that way.

At the ripe young age of 19 I met a young man (he was 22) and he would be my husband about 8 years later (we took our time). When I first met him I referred to him as ‘Happy Puppy Boy’ not the most bad ass of Superhero monikers but positivity absolutely radiated from him like no other person I’d ever encountered. He got me thinking about a lot of things. After the first time we hung out, a casual get together at his house where we painted a picture together, we never stopped hanging out (to this day).

Then, as many life-changing stories go, I had a sort of ‘near death’ experience. At the age of 25 I got really, really sick. Got admitted to the hospital where a series of tests were done on me for about a month. It was January of ‘01 and it took till February of that same year to determine I had Lymphoma, a strange type of mystery cancer. No one in my family had it, I didn’t get it from smoking or drinking or doing drugs (and those things were present in my life back then) just a mystery. I told my handsome young boyfriend to move on with his rock’n’roll life. He laughed at me.

He proposed to me officially in my hospital bed and the result of the whole experience made Sarcastia Morbidia go into a sort of retirement. Maybe the whole world didn’t totally suck. Maybe my life wasn’t cursed so much as it was… full of challenges. Challenges that made me a stronger person (what ever doesn’t kill you…) and made me a gentler soul. I remember calling up a good friend randomly one day just to tell her I loved her, “Are you drunk? It’s not even noon yet!” no, not drunk just wanted to make sure the important people in my life knew that they mattered.

Now I have to admit Sarcastia isn’t completely gone. She’s just mellowed with age. I know for certain she isn’t M.I.A. because my own 3yr old daughter has successfully been sarcastic. That’s right, it seems I’ve passed it on to her already, which honestly doesn’t bother me. It’s in a different form, the funny version. When I ask her ten times if she’s hungry and she replies, “Yes Mama, after that big lunch I just ate I’m still hungry…” - Really honey?! I ask obliviously, “No Mama, of course not, I’m stuffed.” why you little…