I’ve been interested in dark comedy ever since I read Anthony Jeselnik‘s Tweet on September 11, 2011. Anthony wrote: Today is the 10th anniversary of my first 9/11 joke.

So with that in mind I started to come up with my own dark comedic punchlines to stories we all can relate to.

I have obviously put all of these in my vault but I wanted to share one:

When I was ten years old and the spring semester was just under way I remember that everybody in class talked about that the second Monday in January was the day of the year where most couples decided to break up. It was the day when married people decided to get a divorce.

This was of course very worrying for me as I had heard my parents argue a lot over Christmas. As I walked home from school my gut was filled with anxious butterflies and I was so nervous my hands were shaking. Perhaps it was paranoia, perhaps it was fear of the unexpected and unknown.

As I reach our house I can see through the window that my mother is sitting with a straight back on a chair at our kitchen table. I enter our house and silently take of my winter coat as I hear my mother call: “Sebastian, get in here, we need to talk!”.

“Oh no, they are getting a divorce”, I quickly think to myself as I move over to the kitchen.
“A very sad thing has come up”, says my mother. “Your dad has received the news that he has cancer”.
“Oh My God!”, I think to myself as tears are rapidly dripping down my tiny ten year old face. My father having cancer is even worse than my parents getting a divorce.

“But Mummy, what will happen now?”, I stutter as I continuously cry and soak down the kitchen table.
She looks me calmly in my wet eyes and says:
“You will have to talk to your dad about that, because we are getting a divorce”.