The Greatest Weapon: Laughter

Let me preface my second laughter blog by acknowledging the fact that I am completely aware of the fact that my friends and I are complete weirdos.  We often partake in odd conversations and act on idiotic ideas. Honestly though, I’m not sure what happened last Friday afternoon but I’m pretty sure we reached a whole new level of strange.

It started out like any other Friday, well except this particular Friday I had an Italian test and I did not feel prepared. I have no idea why any professor would schedule a test for Friday! I’m already so exhausted and sick of schoolwork by Thursday that the last thing I want to do is study for an exam. And on top of that there were four different verb tenses on this test! I can barely keep the present tense straight in my mind – how could it be possible to distinguish between four?! After lying around for another thirty minutes after my alarm, I finally pulled myself out of bed and began to look over my notes. I felt overwhelmed by the amount of information I needed to know. Italian phrases and verb conjugations crowded my brain, threatening to spill out of my ears.

I somehow successfully managed to keep my facts straight on my exam and at 12:50 pm, I was finally free. After enjoying my free Chick-fil-a, I headed over to my friend’s apartment in Tom Brown to hang out and relax. My friends and I were just sitting on the couch when I accidentally spilled chips all over the place. Suddenly it was crisis mode. I’m not sure why we were so alarmed by the chip spillage but we proceeded to hunt for a vacuum to clean up the mess.

My friend – who shall remain nameless as to protect her “normal” reputation – found a handheld vacuum cleaner. Crisis averted – we cleaned the crumbs from the couch cushions – but the vacuuming did not stop there. I had also somehow gotten crumbs inside the bottom of my pant leg. Obviously the only solution was to vacuum my pants as well. This turned into vacuuming each other’s feet for a good ten minutes.

As we sat there vacuuming each other’s feet, laughter erupted and flooded the apartment. My friend’s roommate came out and saw what we were doing. We sucked her in (ha get it?) and soon enough her feet were thoroughly cleaned. Eventually we started vacuuming our legs and arms with this handheld vacuum. The sensation is very odd – it tickles you and warms you at the same time. Seriously, try it for yourself!

Now as for the source of our laughter, I believe that it was a combination of relief and relaxation. I had been stressed all morning about my test and needed to blow – or suck – off some steam. Somehow the situation escalated to the vacuuming of each other’s extremities, which evoked laughter just from the sheer peculiarity of the activity. Our laughter resulted from our relaxation, the mere recognition of the strangeness of the situation. We laughed to break the tension. Our laughter seemed to bring us closer together, and even caused others to join in on our activity. Those are some of the greatest results of laughter – relief and the formation of closer ties. Mark Twain was attributed with saying, “The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.” I truly believe that laughter is the best relief from any hardship – it brings joy and a renewed perspective on life. Things start to look up whenever you laugh.