Laughing fits.
I haven’t had one in a good long time. I look forward to the next one. Oh, you never know when one is going to hit you. They’re best when you’re all alone. The laughing over takes you when you’re alone and you can really enjoy it. You don’t have to try and interrupt yourself to explain what’s happening to the other person in the room.
Often the explanation just flattens the laughs. So, it’s best when you have a solitary laughing fit all alone in a room.
I’ve discussed laughing fits with other people. It’s just like black licorice. You either have a taste for it or not. You’ve either had laughing fits or not.
You’ve never had a laughing fit?
I’m sorry. So, so sorry!
My father and my husband had minor laughing fits. Rudimentary ones. The type where you laugh and bang your fist on the table. You woo hoo and wipe tears from your eyes. You see the confused looks on the faces around you. And, this makes you laugh even harder.
Major laughing fits involve movement. Rolling on the floor. Dancing across a room.
Although private laughing fits feel the best……………..a laughing fit with an audience can be satisfying too. There is great satisfaction to get a whole group of people laughing along with you. They have no idea what they’re laughing about. Not at all. Your laugh is contagious. They’re only laughing because you are.
You started it!
My mother loved to laugh. She loved story telling and she especially loved funny. Not joke and punch line funny. She knew what tickled her funny bone. She usually had her laughing fits all by herself in the bathroom. Sitting on the toilet.
Yeah, I know. Weird.
I figure it happened there because it was the only place in the house where she could be truly alone for five minutes.
I remember many times talking to her through that door. She’d be laughing away and I’d stand in the hallway with my ear pressed to the hard wood door.
“What’s so funny?” I’d ask because I really wanted her to share. I could have used a laugh myself that day.
“Wooo Hoooo! Ha Ha Ha!” she’d reply along with “Bang Bang Bang” with her fists on the bathroom wall.
My son has them. They’re a watered down version of my mother’s type of laughing fit. He goes into the refrigerator and grabs a bottle of Chardonnay to top off his glass. He thinks of something and he chuckles softly all through the pouring and the re-corking. He puts the bottle back and chuckles all the way up the stairs.
I don’t ask him what’s so funny. I’d just interrupt his private laugh. I don’t want to be a spoil sport.
My best friend has them once in a while.
We’ll be on the phone for our half an hour a day. A few times a year she’ll say “Do you remember when you……………………” and then she dissolves into laughter. And, snorts. And. I hear hissing woo hoos. I can hear her banging her free hand on the counter. She’s stomping her feet. She’s gasping for breath as she tries not to pee her pants.
When she does that? I know exactly what moving picture she has in her head.
She was directing a teen group’s production of Grease. She asked me to stage manage. I said yes. Because, I hadn’t learned to say “No!” yet. I was not a natural at stage managing.
It was dress rehearsal. I went to fly in some scenery in from the rafters. I had one hand on the rope. I let the handle go. That fly system hadn’t been weighted correctly and I flew six feet up into the air. I held on.
She screamed for my husband to come and save me.
He grabbed me by the waist and screamed for me to let go. I screamed back that I outweighed him and I didn’t want to let go. I would flatten him like a pancake. He yelled “I’ve got you. Let go, darn it!” about ten times in front of all the teeny boppers wearing poodle skirts and leather jackets.
I finally let go and he carried me off the stage sitting on his shoulder to thunderous applause.
It took me a week to pick all that sisal rope out of my hands.
The memory of me being pulled up into the air and my subsequent saving…………….brings my friend to tears every time she remembers it.
I listen patiently while she has her laughing melt down…………….and then I say “Yeah, wasn’t so funny from where I was. The light up there almost set my hair on fire before I finally let go.”
And…………….. she’s off again.
I grew up watching The Three Stooges every Saturday morning. I’d sit with a bag of Hershey kisses on the living room rug. I’d laugh and roll on the floor while they performed their shenanigans. Boink Boink and Moe would poke someone in the eyes.
I blame The Three Stooges for the laughing fit I had when my husband fell on the ice in the driveway.
I had warned him. I told him I had thrown salt down but it was still pretty slippery out there. He had given me the face. The face that said “I’m not a baby. I can get myself into the car without falling on my backside.”
And, then he flew through the air and fell on his butt. He didn’t just fall. Upon landing his body slid another ten feet down the driveway.
Oh, I admit it.
I had a laughing fit.
I laughed and hooted and had tears running down my face as I sat down on the ice. As I crab walked down the icy driveway to get to his side. While, I tried to gasp out “Are you alright?”
He wasn’t alright.
I had numerous laughing fits that evening. On the way to the hospital because he said he thought he broke his collar bone. While he was getting x-rays……….I had to go out into the hallway and laugh myself blind.
The emergency room doctors thought I was a real piece of work.
The sight of him flying though the air was just too hilarious to try to explain.
My husband tried to explain me to them. “Oh, when she gets nervous or upset it comes out as laughter.”
They still thought I was an unfeeling witch. That made me laugh all the more.
It wasn’t so funny cutting his meat up for him for a week because his arm was in a sling, though.
I have to give the blue ribbon for laughing fits to my brother, though. He is a champion. I don’t even try to compete with him. When something hits him as funny he goes totally wonky. It takes over his whole body. I think he ends up rolling back and forth on the rug because he loses all strength in his legs.
He was 17 and I was 13. Our auntie from a neighboring town was visiting a few days after Christmas. She was there to give us all our Christmas gifts. We sat down in the living room to open them.
My mother started. Her gift from Auntie was a two foot tall yellow ceramic cookie jar. It was in the shape of a big yellow Happy Face on a long slender neck. It was truly hideous. But, Mom faked it good. Real good.
“Oh, my God! I love it! Isn’t that something! Isn’t this unique! I have just the place for it on my kitchen counter!” she told my auntie.
My brother snickered from the corner. My mother gave him the evil eye. He turned his snicker into a cough behind his hand.
Then it was my turn.
My gift was exquisitely wrapped. My auntie was a master with the foil wrapping paper and bows. I felt the strangely shaped gift with my hands. I had no idea what it could be. I made it last.
My brother straightened himself up in his chair in the corner. He had himself under control for the moment.
And, then I tore through the paper to find a small round throw rug. It was the type to go next to your bed. When you’re 13 years old. It was a little round shag carpet and it was neon pink. And, it was a Happy Face. Two eyes and a big smile. I shook out the carpet and made appropriate “I love it” noises.
I turned it around and showed it to my brother who was sitting in the corner.
He clutched his stomach and moaned. He tried to hold it in. His laugh came out like a big bark. Har! Har! Har! Arf! Arf!
My mother glared at him.
He tried to suck it in. He grabbed a paper napkin off a nearby table and blew his nose. His arm went up across his eyes and he moaned. I think he was actually talking to the inside of his elbow.
And, then it was his turn.
He hiccuped. He was afraid to open the small perfectly square box. Auntie had a theme going this Christmas. If he got a Happy Faced anything he was going to lose it. He knew that.
We all knew that.
My mother stared him in the face. Her look dared him. She dared him to laugh at a gift in front of the auntie who had bought it for him.
“Go ahead, have your laugh. I’ll kill you later.” her look said.
He tried so hard.
He failed.
He tore open the beautiful wrapping. He used scissors to open the tape that was holding the box shut. He threw off the bubble wrap inside.
He held up a round opaque lamp on a black base. His eyes widened. He bit his top lip. His eye brows wiggled up and down. His right foot started to tap up and down.
He turned the lamp for all of us to see.
We were looking at two eyes and a smile.
A Happy Face lamp.
He had been holding his breath. He put his head back and let it rest on the recliner for a moment. He stared at the ceiling. He breathed in and out.
And, then he let it rip.
He screeched in laughter. He hooed and hawed in my direction. My eyes widening at the first sight of the awful lamp gave him permission to go for it. He laughed so hard that his ribs almost caved in. He grabbed himself around the middle because he was in pain. The core strength left his body.
He hit the floor.
The room was very small. But, he had to roll. He rolled toward the fire place.
My mother screamed out loud that he was going to light himself on fire.
That got through to him.
He rolled in the opposite direction. Auntie, Mom and I stuck our legs out straight so he could roll underneath them. He was picking up steam.
He rolled to the left and leveled the entire Santa’s village set up under the table in front of the picture window. Reindeer, houses, fir trees and elves went flying all over the room.
My mother looked at my auntie and she said “Oh, I am so sorry……..this doesn’t mean he doesn’t love the lamp. It’s just tickled his funny bone.” as he rolled on by.
He was now smack dab in the middle of the tiny living room. He lie flat on his back with his knees drawn up. He sobbed and snorted and tried to draw breath into his lungs.
“Oh, that’s alright, Ellie.” said my auntie. “Let him enjoy himself. Look how happy that Happy Face lamp has made him.”
And, for some reason…………….that got him going all over again.
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