A sense of humour can get people through difficult times. Humour can make burdens lighter. Some might say that a sense of humour is necessary for good mental health. If you can laugh at yourself, it tends to put things into a much more manageable perspective.Have you ever detached a bit from what you were doing, the situation in which you found yourself, and watched yourself as if you were seeing yourself in a movie? There you are, doing this or that, and there you go, doing THIS? Or THAT?! You just have to laugh, and when you laugh, you laugh at yourself.I was reminded this morning of how much I like to laugh. When I was growing up in a family of five children, we would sit around the dinner table and start making witty comments back and forth. After awhile the place would be roaring. I knew a family who did the same thing until one day the mother demanded, “No more laughter at the dinner table”. And of course everybody looked at each other and just about gagged on their potatoes.This morning my son in Boston wrote that he had noticed a prominent pizza company had adopted the motto, “Oh yes we did!” but he thought that might not be such a good thing to say. Then he gave a few examples:“Hey, they messed up my order!""Oh yes we did!""This pizza tastes like it has rotten vegetables...”"Oh yes we did!""Is that pizza made out of cardboard instead of dough?""Oh yes we did!""It looks like someone emptied their trash can on my pizza!""Oh yes we did!""Is this hot sauce instead of marinara?""Oh yes we did!"My second son, living in Seattle responded simply:“Oh, no you didn't...”And then my daughter, living in Portland, piped up:“Oh, yes we did!”I was in a meeting once with all three of my children when that boy who now lives in Seattle took complete control away from the grown man who was supposed to be in charge and had everyone laughing so much and so hard that the erstwhile leader looked at me and raised his hands and arms as if to say, “I give up”. Such humour can be a great asset.However, I do realise that sometimes humour can run away with you, become irritating noise at a sensitive moment, or deflect from actually making meaningful contact with another person. I also think that people who have what is called a “dry” sense of humor sometimes chafe, like sandpaper dragged across a sunburn. Sarcasm is humour that cuts; the purpose of sarcasm is not to make everybody feel good with laughter. The purpose of sarcasm is to dig at someone.And that reminds me of what it’s like to be around a passive-aggressive person. Just like sarcasm looks light but feels heavy, passive-aggressiveness looks like one thing but plays out like something really different and ugly.The passive-aggressive person displays a pattern of negativistic attitudes and passive resistance. He or she drags the feet in fulfilling routine social and occupational tasks. He or she complains of being misunderstood and unappreciated by others. The passive-aggressive person can be sullen and argumentative. He or she unreasonably criticises and scorns authority. He or she may envy and resent those more successful or fortunate. He or she expresses exaggerated complaints of personal misfortune. He or she alternates between hostile defiance and contrition.Passive-aggressive people like to aggravate others to the point where these other people begin venting appropriate anger, and then the passive-aggressive person will sit up on the high road and smirk with glee at how miserable other people seem to be. When people attempt to call them on their behaviour, they feign innocence and attempt to turn the tables, pointing out that they are not the ones losing control and getting angry.Passive-aggressive people withhold needed information or permission. Others might describe them as controlling. If you could watch them like a bug on the wall in their day, you might say, “What got into him?” or “Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed” because you would not be able to believe how nasty the person is being just because he or she can. The problem is that it’s not matter of a passing and unusual moment; that person is not simply having a bad day they are having a bad life.The problem, to be more precise, is that the passive-aggressive person will not allow him or herself to be honest. They are unhappy people who feel that life, fate, other people, or God have done them wrong, and they cannot admit it. They often hide behind a screen of super spirituality, high morals, or just being the suffering servant of others while they are seething with resentment and anger. Instead of owning what they feel and being honestly angry about it, their anger comes out sideways and they go around pricking other people in the side with the sharp stick of their discontent. It actually makes them feel better to make other people feel worse.There have been some miserable characters in the movies that have made me laugh. I am thinking of Jack Nicholson’s obsessive-compulsive character in ‘As Good As It Gets’. I love that movie, and I love that character, because as odd as he is, as outrageous as he can behave, there is a redeeming edge to him, and he actually changes. He changes because the other people in his life begin to get to him, and he finds himself caring. Almost groaning with reluctance, he finds himself giving up his dysfunction.Stubbornly passive-aggressive people are untouchable. They reside behind a veneer of composure and respectability, and almost without thinking about it they poke other people. To me they are cowards and not the least bit funny. Sadly, their basic relational approach is to blame others for their misery while making themselves impervious to compassion with a thick callous of their own resistance.