Sympathy?

My brother and I got into a discussion the other day after we were severly chastised by our dear mama about our lack of sympathy when my cousin Katie smoked a deer about 8 hours after she had bought her car, the first major purchase she has ever made. Don't get me wrong, we feel really bad for her and told her that...for the first 5 minutes. After that we got carried about with the extreme humor to be found in the situation. She had barrelled over a porcupine corpse on the way to Mercer, narrowly missed a dead rabbit, and then hit a spiker with her brand new car in about 2 hours. This shit is funny people. The fact that my brother and I were both astonished that people, especially Katie, did not find this as funny as we did led us to believe that sympathy is genetic and probably not a dominate gene. We don't seem to have it. My dad has a limited supply of sympathy, as do Nat and I. Sure, we can both console people and feel bad for them for a little while but then enough is a freakin' 'nough, fix your problems instead of sitting around cryin' about them. There are million of people dying of AIDS without enough money to buy food for them and their 8 equally AIDS ridden children, much less medicine. That's a problem. Global warming is melting our polar ice caps. That's a problem. There are alligators living in the sewers of New York City. That's a problem. I guess I consider anything that can be fixed by a little work and creative think not deserving of my sympathy. Don't get me wrong, I will sit there and show you how sorry I feel for you...and then I will give you a swift kick in the ass and tell you to get your ass in gear and either deal with the problem or fix it.
You think that's bad? My brother has a friend who is racked with the question of whether or not he should file for divorce from his wife who has been less than good to him. When telling Nat that he just couldn't bring himself to fill out the papers and saying that he just didn't know what to do about the situation Nat said, loosely quoted, "Give me the fucking papers, I'll fill them out and you can just sign them. You need to get rid of that cracked out whore."
If I had the capability to make a punnett square detailing my theories on the heredity qualities of sympathy on my blog I would. But I can't so I guess you're just going to have to take my word on this one. It's not that I don't care that you just hit a deer with your brand new car people, or that your boyfriend broke up with you because someone told him you had the clap, or that you got a bad grade on your test, or that you accidently burned the roof of your mouth on a marshmallow, it's that I don't know how to show you I care...and that I'd much rather make fun of the situation than whine about it.