It really is hard to know with the “just joking” stuff. I actually did a little soul searching and asked myself what I mean when I fall into the trap of saying such things. You know what I realized? I rarely mean it as a complete joke. There always is some sort of nagging truth behind my words. How awful is that? It may not be anything particularly against the other person. I might simply be feeling crappy and want to rain on someone else’s parade. Not good and not fair. Of course there are exceptions. I did say ‘rarely’ afterall. So there are occasions when I really am joking. We really need to be careful when we try to tie things to ‘jokes’ though.

Ouch.