I know that I was young. I know that I was sitting at the dinning room table with my family. The fact that we were in the dinning room meant that it was a special dinner of some sort, since most of our meals were taken in the “breakfast room”.
I don’t remember the occasion, nor do I remember what was said. But I can remember laughing so hard that I flopped from my chair to the floor, just to the right of my Dad… I rolled to my back, then to my side in a fetal position… writhing not in pain; but convulsed in the pure joy of laughter.
Not great dinner table decorum, I grant you.
My guess is that Dad told some anecdote… a story rather than a straight joke… and maybe it was his phrasing… his use of funny adjectives or verbs that caught me… maybe his facial expression punctuated points. But whatever the spark, his story painted such a clear picture in my mind, and it would have been the improbability of that manufactured scene that would have sent me “over the edge”.
I could not contain myself. Thank God it wasn’t “high tea” with the Queen in attendance!
There would be other times when this could happen. I would begin the laugh… and the laughter would build on itself. I could not stop it… my facial muscles would begin to hurt, as would my stomach… no power on earth could halt the inevitable path I was on… it would have to run its course.
The casual observer of the scene in the dinning room that day, seeing me on the floor, gripping my stomach, might incorrectly guess that I was hurt or possibly in some type of fit.
No… far from being hurt, I was just happy beyond belief, somewhat fatigued, perhaps, by the added theatricality of rolling about the floor… but some how proud that I was able to hear Dad’s words… establish an accurate picture in my mind & then respond to it with all my soul… with all my being.
Do I love to laugh? You bet I do! Call it the primate in me. And don’t tell me that you don’t laugh when you see a chimpanzee laugh!
Mostly, laughter is a way for me to beat back time. To beat back the crush of age that can weigh us down.
When I laugh I am returned to the outrageous giggles of being tickled as a toddler, I am returned to the elephant jokes we told in the 8th grade, I am returned to the small theatre on the Upper East Side catching a Chaplin film with my parents, I am returned to the dinning room of 25 Alston Ave… laughing without control at my Dad’s stories.
But mostly I am returned to being whole.
That’s what happens when you laugh.