Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Laughter


There are tears of sadness, relief, happiness and emotion. (Hall mark Hall of Fame, It's a Wonderful Life) With laughter, there is just the release of great joy. I'm excluding snickers, sarcastic or mean chuckles. I'm talking about belly hurting, eyes closed, not being able to breathe laughter. Hiccups to follow.
Sometimes it is the place it occurs. Like, for instance places where laughing at a particular time would not be appropriate. Example:church. I have couple favorite stories about my Dad. One story is at his expense and the other about his laughter.
Christmas eve found Dad's family at church, sitting near front like we always did. During the service we noted our father, who was dressed in his best suit, had on an old pair of brown, scuffed, paint speckled shoes on. ( to go with his wonderful suit) He had worn them earlier in the day when he was painting. To his horror and to our entertainment, this discovery was made about half way through the service. His children and wife began to emit stifled laughter. Shoulders shaking in almost perfect harmony. As you all know this is very difficult to do. We wanted to just let go of belly laughs but knew we dare not. On the way out of the service, he had us surround him so no one would see his dressing gaff as we shuffled in a circle surrounding our very concerned father.
The other remembrance has his daughter arm wrestling his youngest son on the floor. (thankfully not me) As Rita pinned Jeff's arm to the floor, my Dad started to laugh so hard, he was crying. Well, as most of you know, one laughing individual may stimulate other beloveds near him to join in the chorus. This laughter went on for nearly 15 min. When it would start to die down, there would be a chortle and it would start all over. My father was somewhat reserved so to see him in this posture made the whole situation even more hysterical.
This topic arrived to my mind as I was reflecting on how my bride and I spent a Friday evening two weeks ago. We went to see the Mall Cop with Ken James. My precious one was laughing really hard in dark next to me. This wonderful laughter on top of James' antics just made things all the more entertainly funny to me. She has this tremendous cute laugh. I have to say that one of my favorite thing to do with the mother of my children is: you guessed it; laugh with her.
It is amazing how the two of us entertain each other. I KNOW our kids think was are super dorky, but that is in our job description. Last April, we were in our modern, all conveniences supplied trailer camper, minus heat from a non-functioning furnace. It was in the 40's. It was "breath seeing cold". We obviously are very cold. We were in bed with as much on as we could fit. Mom even has her down vest on. We were in bed for 10 min or so and she started rustling around. This went on for several minutes and I finally asked, "What are you doing?". She says, I'm trying to get my feet into the vest". I'm thinking, What!!?? I said, " this I gotta see". She starts laughing and I start laughing with this mental picture of her trying to move her feet up into her chest area under the vest. We laughed for several minutes; HARD. Then it might quiet down until a giggle would rise up and it would start all over again. This went on for 15 minutes, at least. Now do you think we could get to sleep now? Heck no! The endorphins were going through our systems searching out every cell to wake it up and take notice.
Laughter is stimulating. You all know it. You go on you tube and see video of people laughing and what do you do? You start laughing too. Sometimes all you need is a mental picture. Someone can tell you a story and you form this mental picture and you start giggling away. Laughter is a great thing. A great way to show our joy. Do animals laugh? That is besides the Hyena. You can tell if a dog is happy but I don't know if they actually laugh. Our laughter is a wonder gift given to us by our Creator. We need to do more of it, don't you think?

2 comments:

  1. It's great that you two love to laugh. I know we have all been there for some of the laugh fests. Here's to many more!

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  2. My favorite, inappropraite, laughter burst came during silent reading in my 8th grade homeroom class. Our school was trying to get all the students to read silently for a half hour. You could not use a textbook, so I brought the book I received that year for Christmas, "Calvin and Hobbes". Soon after I start reading I get the giggles. The teacher proceed to ask me to stop. Finally, after asking me three times she threatened me with detention. Now, I was a good student, so I had a diliemia, continue to read this comic book and laugh and get detention, or not read and get detention. So, I decided to continue reading, but not laugh. This worked okay for the first few pages, but I was now holding my breath for minutes on end trying to laugh out loud. To my dismay, I flipped a page, and all I see is Calvin flying through the air naked. Calvin and Hobbes were playing battleship in the tub and Hobbes had cannonballed Calvin, causing him to fly through the air. Now I had been holding my breath for a solid two minutes now, and when I saw this I involentarilly thrusted forward, slamming my head on my desk, and shooting snot out of my nose. I had to get up and find a Kleenex to wipe my desk off. My teacher asked me to see what I was reading. Luckily she started to laugh out loud as well, so she did not give detention, but she did not allow me to continue reading Calvin and Hobbes in class. I was the only one stuck reading a 12 grade history book. Funny.

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