Because of Laughter

Ever since I was a girl I have always loved to laugh. If it was not for laughter I would never have had the courage to acquire a first boyfriend, but that’s getting ahead of myself.

Laughter in my household I feel came from a place of pure joy and love in my family of just being together. When I was about five years old or so, my dad and I had this running joke where he would pick me up in his arms and pretend to be dancing with me in a ballroom. And he would say in a fake snotty British accent “Dahling are you having a lovely time?” and just to be contrary and a brat I would turn my head away and say “No!” That would crack him up and I would start laughing as well. Making my dad laugh at that age was just such a validation for me. And my brother made me laugh just all the time! He would tell funny stories, make funny faces, do impersonations, we would sing and dance and make up characters together so he was always cracking me up.  My mom was more an audience member than a participant in humor because she loves to laugh as well but when she does tell a joke it’s usually through storytelling and the punch line is always well worth the buildup. 

I remember one day, my parents and I were all out in the living room in our second Brooklyn apartment and my brother came out wearing one of my dresses. We all fell apart! I mean we must have just laughed for several minutes and my brother just started cracking up too. I don’t know why he just decided to do that but it was very spontaneous and silly and totally unexpected and it just released all of this laughter. 

Now that I think of it, it makes sense to me that my brother’s best friend would end up being my first boyfriend. I was intensely shy and very picky about who I socialized with for as long as I can remember. My brother was the outgoing, social one who would run out on the playground and engage kids. I was very introverted and in a world of my own unless I was playing with my brother and cousins. Because I followed my brother everywhere, I was able to explore my own more adventurous and extroverted side comfortably. Laughter is a thing that pulls you out of yourself and unifies you with others who get the joke too and it’s a feeling I have always cherished as someone who has always felt a bit like an outsider for the most part.  My natural affinity towards comedians and class clowns has really been an unconscious one until lately. I never thought about why this was. My brother was someone I loved and trusted and made me laugh so by association I could be comfortable with having feelings for his best friend because he made laugh uproariously as well. He impressed me with how funny he was and in so doing got me to be his girlfriend. 

What I didn’t recognize then, and would not for many years, was the kind of humor that came from pain and dysfunction, a kind of compensation for something lacking. There was darkness behind the kind of humor I would come to be drawn to in many of the guys I became close to in the future but I didn’t understand that darkness. I only understood that they made me laugh.  It took me years to put it together because I just couldn’t relate to that particular source of pain. I thought it was impossible to be funny and not have a connection to joy and love.  As it turns out, some of the funniest people I’ve known have also been products of the darkest and the most troubled foundations. 

I’m starting to see now that humor and comedy, like any art at its best is about consciously working out all sorts of personal and interpersonal issues and if you can make people laugh while you’re doing it, that’s all the better because laughter is truly healing. It’s cathartic and brings people together.

 F. and I laugh all the time. He’s one of the very few people whom I am comfortable being a total clown around because he gets me. We get each other. Our collective love of humor comes from a sheer love of just gut busting laughs. But my more individual tastes in humor range from out and out silliness which I attribute my dad letting us watch “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”, Abbot and Costello and Laurel & Hardy to a darker, more self-deprecating, snarky, biting and sarcastic display. I was crazy about the Marx Brothers when I was a girl and probably had a bit of a thing for Groucho who was an absurdest, sarcastic, charming, lecherous flirt.  Yeah that explains a lot.  

In any case, when I get to laugh very deeply and from the core of myself, I feel cleansed in a unique way that’s incomparable to anything else I experience to relieve stress, even if it’s only for a few minutes. I guess it’s kind of like and orgasm for your lungs. LOL! Conversely, whenever I’ve had to fake laughter for extended periods of time for whatever reasons, I get a headache and feel absolutely miserable. I limit very strictly any contact I have to have with people whom I have to fake laughter around. 

 I think it’s so important to be able to discover humor which touches you authentically. I can recount the times in my life where someone who  just by making me laugh, jarred me out the occasional self-conscious paranoia that comes with just being alive and thereby brought us closer to a shared feeling of camaraderie or intimacy and I cherish those moments  just as much as any physical expression of closeness.  I remember them and treasure them dearly.