Make Me Laugh

It's a funny thing, how we learn to find humor in the world.  My family uses jokes and sarcasm to get through life, especially some of the tougher times.  I think most of the world (or at least most Americans) are like that.  Not everyone appreciates it, and there's a time and place where humor doesn't belong....something I've had to learn the hard way a time or two.  Now I tend to fault on the other side; I can be way too serious.  I think that happened after my best friend Laura's death.  We used to laugh a lot, so it felt like laughter died for me for a good long while. 

I've gotten better with time, and this year I made a conscious choice to try to be a little more light-hearted with my students.  I'm seeing good results, even though what is funny to me isn't always funny to them.  When I ask them what makes them laugh, almost to a person they will say, "People falling down."  Then they can recount endless tales of people slipping on ice, a friend crashing on the basketball court, a video they watched of a woman free-falling into a huge floor safe opening in a convenience store.  OK, I admit, I saw that video, too, and it is kind of funny.  Annnnddd.....if I really tell the truth, I've laughed at others, but mostly myself, for the same thing.

There was the time that a couple of junior high students loosened the bolts in my not-very-sturdy desk chair, sometime back in the mid-90's.  I sat down, the legs on the left side shot out from under me, the rest of the chair slid to the right, and there I was on the floor, barely able to look over the desk and see the horrified expressions of my kids----and I burst into hysterical laughter.  Really, what else was there to do?  I had no dignity left; laughter was the only way to regain a bit of it.

There was the episode almost six years ago when I went out for an afternoon coffee on a first date with a nice guy named Jon.  Later that night, he had a heart attack---boy, did we take some kidding over that.  But it didn't end there.  A couple of days later, when I was visiting him in the hospital, I got tripped up by the lead wires on his monitor when I tried to walk away from the bedside.  Whomp!  Those things yanked my feet right out from under me, and I landed with such a resounding thump on the top of my forehead that it left a dent at my hairline.  Both of my eyes turned black, and many laughs were had at my expense, including my own amusement after I got over the accompanying embarrassment and the desire to have the floor open up and swallow me right there. 

Of course, some of the best fun of my entire life was had with Laura.  She had a completely infectious laugh; no one could hear it and not laugh along.  I remember playing some kind of trivia card game once, and she was moderating the game and reading the answers.  This was over a Christmas holiday, and we were all feeling a little giddy and silly from having time off.  She came across an answer that she misread:  "Who is St. Francis of a Sissy?"  After a split second, we all started rolling with laughter, including her.  "Oh, that's St Francis of Assisi!"  I was guilty of the same kind of mistake one time, playing Trivial Pursuit with my dear friend Diana, my freshman roommate from college.  She asked the question, "Who wore the coat of many colors?"  My country-girl background leapt in front of my good sense with the answer I shouted out:  "Dolly Parton!"  Diana---I am not making this up---laughed so hard that she turned over the chair she was sitting in, leaving us both howling on the floor.  Even then, I was saying, "What?"  She shouted, "It's JOSEPH, you backwater hillbilly!"  I'm laughing as I write this, and I laugh every time I hear Dolly Parton's name since then, and that was 25 years ago.

Laura and I never really fought, but we would harangue each other sometimes until the other said something about leaving it alone.  More than once, she would tell me to just let whatever it was go because I was "giving her a tic."  She was the sweetest, most even-tempered person ever, but we were close enough that we'd sometimes react to things the way I've seen some married couples act:  to look at the other like he or she was crazy or somehow responsible for all the crazy in the world.  Once, we went to the Hardee's drive-through in the middle of the night for breakfast.  There was a line of drunks who had left the bar and were picking up breakfast to sober up, so we were stuck in line for a while.  We rolled down the windows to smoke and were hit with a very foul smell. She turned and looked at me with a demanding glare and asked, "What IS that smell?"   I said I didn't know.  She said, "Well, it smells like a huge wad of Parmesan cheese and dirty feet!"  Again with the looking at me.  Finally I said, "Well, it's not my feet!  They're very clean."  She started laughing then.  I started laughing.  She laughed so hard that her face turned purple---she did that sometimes when her laughter got the better of her.  Laughing myself, I shouted, "Stop that!  You're going to make yourself puke!"  (That sometimes happened too, if she laughed too hard and didn't breathe.)  The more she tried to quit, the more she laughed.  Just about the time we reached the window, she started gagging.  I coolly reached into the back floorboard, handed her the little car trashcan, and turned to give the money to the cashier in one motion.   We had many laughs for years after that, how the only puker that cashier had in line that night was in the car with the stone-cold sober girls. 

We had, in fact, more laughter in the 20 years we knew each other than a lot of people get in a whole lifetime.  It's no wonder that some part of my sense of humor died with her when I think of all the ways she made me smile, giggle, guffaw, and roll with side-splitting fun.  Some was crude, much was witty, and it was all based on complete trust and enduring friendship.  My friend Mary Beth is one who can make me laugh now with her dry, sarcastic observations about society, politics, life, and even cancer.  You know you've got a remarkable person on your hands when you learn that she had parties with her family before her mastectomies, celebrating "Breast Friends" and "Thanks for the Mammaries."

My nieces and nephews have been wonderful sources of hilarity, ever since birth.  The whole family loves kids and will flock to them and tell stories about funny things they do.  My brother's dry humor just kills me.  I remember talking to him once in the fall and asking him if he'd had any snow yet.  "'Bout a foot," he replied.   I said, "Really?" and he responded, "Yep....snowflakes about a foot apart."  OK, that's not the greatest example, but it's one I remember.  My mom and I can sometimes get to laughing at the silliness of life and get the giggles together, and dad is happiest when he's making someone laugh.  In fact, you just can't call yourself a Welker if you don't have a sense of humor.  If you don't believe me, check out my cousin Dennis Welker's facebook page; he's made sly wit an art form. 

Laughter is more than the best medicine; it's the glue that holds life together and the cells that bind hearts.  Hope you've got a good healthy dose of it in your world, dear reader.