Life Of Laughter

Laughter is an automatic response (usually) to jocularity. When something is funny, we laugh, simple. We also laugh in response to horror, anger and fear, which is a defensive mechanism developed by men to show they ‘ain’t scared of nothing,’ -- that makes me laugh.

I am a laugher, but there was a period in my life when I wasn’t. I used to say, “Oh that’s funny,” but would never laugh. People thought: I was stuck up (of course that wasn’t the case), or just didn’t find ‘things’ as funny as normal people -- normal being the key word here. The problem was and still is, I have migraines and anyone who knows about these, (you’d rather put your head through the wall) light blinding, noise sensitive, head splitting types of headaches, will appreciate that certain things set them off. Of all the things that could and would possibly set them off, laughter was the culprit. I found this out (after years of going home so sick I wanted to die), at the amusement park. So, I stopped laughing, good-bye, the end.

Kevin, my cousin and jester in residence of our family, used to get me laughing so hard I would stop breathing as tears streamed down my face. I might even turn blue, if the jokes were particularly riotous. We loved to laugh and Kevin was always happy to help in that aspect of our lives. He was a class clown that George Carlin would have envied. Luckily enough, Kevin found an outlet for his jocularity. He moved to Hollywood and now tortures others with breathless, tear stained, sidesplitting glimpses into his endless well of jokes.

My sister Chris and my mother Susan (you remember her from the southern cooking piece I wrote) and me, used to sit in our estrogen based atmosphere and make each other laugh, boys are banned from this club. They found particular pleasure in trying to cause my death.

We will call this “Death by Taco Chip Inhalation.”

A little Mexican food restaurant, down the street from our home, was a favorite of ours. They would wait patiently until I consumed the crispy chips in the bowl before hitting me, upside the head, with punch lines of jokes. This, in turn, would instantly cause me to inhale fragments of chips into my lungs, making the two of them laugh even harder. At the time, it wasn’t funny to me. Years later I look back and laugh -- it was funny but dangerous.

They weren’t being mean (I hope), they were just enjoying the time spent together laughing.

After realizing that laughter was causing my migraines, I found a way to fix the problem medically (better living through chemistry). Thank goodness. Could you imagine going your entire life without laughing? Neither could I. So now I laugh and pretty regularly too I’m happy to say.

I have children now who need tortured with the jocularity that runs rampant in our family. I promise not to choke them on taco chips, or turn them blue -- maybe. I might see if I can get my kids to laugh milk through their noses though. George Carlin and I will both laugh, him in heaven (because God likes a good joke) and me here on earth.

She laughed.