“Why are you so sarcastic?”

“It goes well with the shoes I’m wearing.”

According to Scientific American, sarcasm is a form of humor that can be both hurtful and creative at the same time. Although it also can be witty and funny, sarcasm often belittles and mocks the receiving person, especially if stupid or obvious questions are perceived. The tone of sarcastic language works better with spoken rather than written words, but I’m going to give it a try here. Let’s follow a guy named Fred through his day. In between, I’ll throw in some quotes from the website Parade.

Fred falls down the stairs. His sister runs to him with fear in her eyes.

“Did you fall down the stairs?”

“Well, if I fell up the stairs, wouldn’t I be at the top step?” Fred said, rubbing his leg in obvious pain.

“Did you hurt your leg?” she asks with concern.

“Uh, well, I thought if I was rubbing my leg the pain in my arm would go away.”

“Didn’t you look where you were going?” she asked.

“Now why would I do that? says Fred. “I just closed my eyes, jumped off the top step and hoped for the best.” Getting annoyed with his sister, he says, “Can’t you see I’m busy right now? Can I ignore you some other time?”

Now, Fred is driving to work. He bumps the car in front of him at a stop sign. The driver jumps out.

“Didn’t you see me stop at the sign?” shouts the driver.

“You mean that big red thing over there? I’d agree with you, but then we both would be wrong.”

“Look at that dent you put on my bumper.”

“I was declared legally blind just this morning.”

“You’d better show me your insurance card, you idiot!”

“I’d show you my driver’s license too, but It was revoked three months ago.

“You have an anger management problem,” Fred said to the scowling driver. “Life is good. You should get one.”

There are differences in opinions about the use of sarcasm because of its ability to make you laugh or make you upset. Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish said, “Sarcasm helps me overcome the harshness of the reality we live, eases the pain of scars and makes people smile.”

Dana Perino, a former White House press secretary, said, “Sarcasm is like cheap wine - it leaves a terrible aftertaste.”

Later at work, Fred carries a file into his boss’s office.

“Is this the file I asked for?” asks the boss.

“Hmmm, let me think,” says Fred. “I grabbed any old file and took my chances that this would be the one.”

His boss snarls at the remark. “What are you, a smart aleck?”

“Uh, that would be a smart Fred. My name’s Fred, not Aleck.” He sees his boss is really getting mad. “It’s OK if you don’t like me,” Fred says. “Not everyone has good taste.”

American actress Aubrey Plaza said, “Sarcasm is weird. Even not in acting, in life I feel like ‘sarcastic’ is a word that people use to describe me sometimes so when I meet someone, it’s almost like they feel like they have to also be sarcastic, but it can sometimes just come off as mean if it’s not used in the right way.”

Kurt Fuller claims that sarcasm helped him succeed in the acting business. “I grew up as a very sarcastic person. I was always the class clown, and to date girls, I had to be really funny. I was really skinny growing up. I was so thin, I had to run around in the shower to get wet. That kind of thin. So I always had to rely on humor and sarcasm.”

Let’s get back to Fred. He gets fired. The next day he stops at another workplace and fills out an application. He hands it to the owner of the business named Tony.

“Is this your resume?” Tony asks.

“Nah, It’s my fourth-grade report card, and when you see my grades you’ll know I’m too lazy to learn,” Fred says.

Tony lets out an uneasy laugh. “I checked back on you. You’ve been fired from your last three jobs. What makes you I think I’m going to hire you with this track record?”

“Don’t worry what people think. They don’t do it very often. By the way, the stuff you heard about me is a lie. I’m way worse.”

“So what’s your first impression of me,” asks Tony.

“Sometimes I meet people and I feel sorry for their dog,” answers Fred.

“Seems to me like you’re going a little crazy.”

“I don’t go crazy. I am crazy. I go normal from time to time.”

Give me one good reason why I should hire you.

“So I can have an affair with your secretary. She was giving me the eye when I walked in.”

“That secretary is my wife,” says Tony. “She has one good eye and the other is a glass eye that she takes out when she goes to bed.”

“Well, then,” says Fred with a smile. “You’d better give me this job. Your wife said she’d keep an eye out for me.”

Fred began his new career that night as a stand-up comic at Tony’s Comedy Club.

Rich Strack can be reached at richiesadie11@gmail.com.