One of the best things in life is laughter. I am talking about those nearly hysterical, stomach aching, tears-in-your eyes bouts of laughter. If you are lucky, there are people in your life who enter into the hilarity easily and often with you. My daughter is one of my main constituents. It does not take much to set us off.
My friend and coworker Bernie and I often had one another in tears at work, which made it even better because we tried mightily to not let it get to that suffocating level - we were at work in the cube farm! We always failed. Bernie and I maintained a file of newspaper articles we collected of the weirdly absurd - stories we were certain would make the other laugh out loud. Over the years, as it turned out, all of the articles involved drunk people. (What are the odds?) Bernie was a quiet and good-natured man but his laughter was so infectious that once he started genuinely laughing, I was lost. Bernie passed away far too early in life. I miss my good friend. I wish he were here right now so we could laugh ourselves into stomach aches and tears.
Another colleague/good friend, Mr. Hamm and I have lived through a fair share of these snorting, suffering, catch-your-breath episodes, most often in a car... traveling 75 miles an hour. If we had crashed, we would have died laughing, literally!
The first time I remember laughing "hysterically", I was very young. We were at an amusement park in Wichita, Kansas known as Kiddie Land. My mother and father dotingly put me in a tiny train car that traveled on a miniature track in a series of circles. For some reason I found the entire experience so much fun that I began laughing and could not stop. I remember feeling a tinge of embarrassment. Perhaps it was a portent of things to come because, believe me, since then there have been dozens of times I needed to stop laughing but simply could not. Not to save my soul.
I still remember the President of our company division and his secretary carrying on two conversations at once that took a turn. This happened decades ago, before HR was much of a factor in the corporate world because the secretary had a new Playgirl magazine at her desk for some reason. She had just mentioned to him there was birthday cake in the break room, and almost simultaneously he had asked about the magazine. She pushed the closed magazine toward him as he asks "Anyone we know?" She retrieves the magazine to begin flipping the pages, solemnly saying "Gee, I don't know. Let me look." He says, "I mean is the birthday cake for anyone we know?" Those two began laughing and could not stop for at least 10 minutes. This could never happen in modern corporate times!
There was a time when I exercised every molecule of will power not to laugh, even biting my tongue. I was in the backseat of the work van, a coworker was driving, and our supervisor was riding shot gun. We had closed the hotel bar down the night before which may or may not have contributed to this fantastic chain of events. After a hearty breakfast we were driving toward the job site in what was essentially an old beater of a van (nothing too good for the survey crew!). We were bumping along over cobble stones, or old red bricks to be more precise. Riding in the van was like riding in a paint shaker anyway, then to add a lumpy, potholed road to the mix and we were vigorously bouncing in our seats. The supervisor was speaking when suddenly, without warning, he vomited all over the dash. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to laugh so desperately! But I was new in that job and it was the boss who just lost his breakfast. I was biting my tongue and hugging myself so I would not laugh.
The driver looks over, his shoulders rolling with laughter already. "I would have pulled over."
The supervisor, poor guy, feebly offers, "I thought that was just a burp."
That was it for me. No power in the universe could have prevented me from laughing at that point.
So many times the story simply does not translate to either the written or spoken word. You simply had to have been there, and I am thankful for every time I was there.
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