Is It Okay To Make A Thalidomide Joke?

Since we're all into insensitivity in our speech I was wondering when it kicks in. For instance, is there a time period in history when it's acceptable to utter a word or phrase before we get a whoopin' or sent to the woodshed? Let's say it's 1370 AD in Europe. That's twenty years after the Great Bubonic Plague. A bunch of peasants or even knights and knaves are sitting around telling jokes and one guy says, "How can you tell if a King survived the Black Death"? The answer would be, "He has more warts on his nose than a frog". Ha Ha.
Then, all of a sudden, some guy drinking ale starts crying because his wife died of the plague. Talk about insensitivity.

Last Sunday The Queen and I went to a Super Bowl party involving three other couples. Two of the men were football fanatics, two didn't care(me included) and the wives wanted to see the ever aging Madonna perform her fluff. In addition to this we had to have a gambling pool. I hate these but only because I never win. I might as well put my money out in the street and let a convicted cocaine addict pick it up. The pool we had involved putting your initials on a sheet of paper then into a box. Every time there was a score an initial was drawn and that person won. I'll cut to the chase now so as to not hold you in suspense. I lost $50 which means the addict did, too.
What struck me as funny, no wait, hilarious was one of the ladies said something extremely out of character. She's a dear friend of ours and is around 72 years old. She's married to a guy who I've know since 1956 except he's seven years older than I. His brother was and is one of my dearest friends. In those days he used to make fun of us just because he could. Back to his wife, this Christian woman. She was counting the name initials then had to make a selection between two of them so she said, "Eenie, meenie, miny mo, catch a---------------okay, you can fill it in. I had not heard a person do this little ditty since the 50's. I was incredulous but at the same time started laughing because who would think anyone would do this especially an older doll. Yeah, it was insensitive but it was funny and I knew Al Sharpton wasn't in the room to cobble things up.

I don't mean to be disrespectful but I can find ways to make people think I'm a horrid person if they heard me. I can be fairly irreverent when I want to be. Two years ago I weighed in at 228 lbs. I hate when that happens. Lizzie couldn't go to the Minnesota lake place with me so I trekked up there by myself. As soon as I arrived I jumped on the bathroom scale but only to see if the 16 hour drive allowed me to drop a few ounces. It hadn't. For thirty days I consumed a milk shake for breakfast, one for lunch and two baked potatoes with onions and catsup for dinner. At the end of this period and back home in Dublin, Ohio people who saw me asked, "how did you lose those twenty-eight pounds"? "Easy" I said, "I went on the Auschwitz diet" aka starvation. There's only one reason I can get away with this. Most all the concentration camp folks and their relatives have gone to meet their Maker. Insensitivity? You be the judge. Chances are pretty good, though, I wouldn't say this in front of someone named Liebowitz.

If you don't golf you may not understand this next example. When swinging the club it's important to have a big arc. It keeps everything in sync and allows for more power. Tuck the previous sentence into your thinking cap. It'll be back in a moment.
In the 1950's there was introduced on the market a drug to help pregnant moms have an easier nine months. The drug was called Thalidomide. After awhile, though, when the children were born there was a serious problem. Some came out of the womb without arms or legs; only hands and feet attached to their torso. I'm not sure how many there were since I never saw one up close.
About ten years ago I was on the golf course with my doctor buddy and made one of those handsy swings, the one without a big arc. Understand I'm a basket case on the course; always tinkering and fidgeting. I took one of those patented turd swings and the ball went forward at least four feet. I looked at my buddy and said, "that's what I call my thalidomide swing". He started laughing and I realized I'd made up a creative and funny joke---unless---a parent of a thalidomide baby was playing in our group. That would be a slight percentage because they would have been eighty years old and upwards of that. Chances are good there weren't too many of these kids on the golf course unless they saw me and decided to take up the game. Hey, if I can do it then they can, too. It wasn't until last year I heard the actual term for this swing. It's called alligator arms. That's more politically correct than mine. Truth be told, I was golfing with a fella from Alabama last week; had never met him before and I took one of my patented swings and yelled out, "Damned thalidomide swing" and he started laughing out loud. Anyone over sixty can appreciate it. The parent's of these kids have gone onto the great beyond and, as I said, the poor kids probably don't play anything with a golf club but putt-putt golf.
It's possible to come up with hundreds of these examples if a guy or gal put their minds to it.
Maybe the point of this blog is, time does heal all wounds, or it could be that I'm a very insensitive person. Or both.