Humor as a Shield

I think I was still a child when I became aware of what people now call self-depricating humor. As I grew up, I often heard my uncles tell numerous stories in which they were the scapegoat. My Uncle Albert claimed that when he went to Detroit to work, he went to a hotel and inquired about a room. When the owner asked him to get on the elevator, he looked inside and said, "I'm sorry Ma'm, but I don't think I could lie down in there." Humor that illustrates the speaker's ignorance and/or stupidity. Then, there is the one about the mountain man that carried mason jars in his truck and when he fixed a flat, he alwlays picked daisys, put them in the jars and placed the jars in front and behind the truck because, "the law says, if your break down on the highway, you have to put flares (flowers) out." Jerry Blunt, Jr. once said that shrewd mountain folks told stories like this when they suspected that they were in the company of people who considered them backward and ignorant. The idea of telling a story that readily admits that you might be just that will disarm your critics. What is the point of insulting a man when he has already admitted that he is your inferior? All of my uncles always had a perverse desire to become what other people thought them to be. I used to do the same thing with my wife's sister. I had once overheard her telling my wife that I was obviously "a stupid hillbilly."
Afterwards, I always became exactly that in her presence. I would pick my nose, use poor grammar and tell racist jokes just so I could see the light come on in her eyes as she looked at my wife as if to say, "Now, what did I tell you!"

Humor as a shield. Something to put between you and the rest of the world that will deflect insults. There is a wealth of humor that is just universal humor, but I have always known that some of it was a survival technique.
Gary