Thursday, July 19, 2007

WARNING: Laughter Not Always The Best Medicine

I love to laugh. I don't do little giggles or quiet chuckles or anything like that. When I laugh, I laugh. I just let loose. I often laugh so hard, I cry.

That's not a problem. I learned early on to wear water-proof mascara.

However, I've learned other things while laughing hysterically. Here are just a few:

1. Laughing on a full bladder is risky, at best. It's better to frequently visit the restroom, just in case. One never knows when the urge to double-over with laughter will produce more than just tears.

2. Laughing while carrying a heavy tray of plates full of hot food is not advisable. For one, it makes it very difficult to maintain one's balance properly. For another, restaurant guests do not look kindly upon a waitress walking by herself and laughing hysterically. Makes them wonder who spiked the sweet tea.

3. Laughing while drinking a carbonated beverage can be disastrous. One has only three choices:

A. Choke it down and hope your lungs can clear themselves of Diet Coke before you cough one of your vital organs right out of your mouth.

B. Abort your attempt to swallow and send the whole fizzy mouthful out your nostrils. This has several disadvantages - namely pain and a significant loss of social standing but on the plus side, it does a remarkable job of clearing the sinuses.

C. Spew the whole mouthful in whichever direction you happen to be facing. This is the least painful option, of course, but tends to ruin electronics and irritate those standing in front of you.

4. Laughing loudly while in a quiet setting, like church or a wedding or your neighbor Milly's daughter's first piano recital, is difficult to explain. One must act quickly to change the laughter into something more plausible for the occasion. Hiding your face and hoping others think you are sobbing uncontrollably works well in weddings and sometimes church but is inadvisable for a piano recital (unless you are my father who really would sob uncontrollably at a butchering of Beethoven). For those moments when sobbing would not excuse you, you must whip out a sudden onset of asthma, a flare up of tuberculosis, or gesture frantically to those around you that you are in need of the Heimlich Maneuver. And for heaven's sake, pray that your bladder is already empty.

5. Laughing uncontrollably when no one else knows what is funny is one of my most common "laughter related faux pas". Not that I really care. I can be amused by something in my own head enough to laugh til I cry. No outside assistance needed. My true friends will begin to laugh with me (because laughter is just as contagious as leprosy or finding yourself oddly fascinated by the train wreck that is Paris Hilton) and others will shake their heads and say that they always knew I was crazy.

6. Finally - a lesson I just learned today thanks to Malystryx - laughing while chewing a mouthful of chicken is NOT ADVISABLE. One has the same three choices that one has when faced with a mouthful of carbonated beverage but with important distinctions.

For one, your lungs cannot discharge a mouthful of chicken with the same painful ease as a beverage. Also, spitting a mouthful of food out takes just seconds longer to accomplish than spitting out a beverage and those seconds make all the difference between expelling and snorting. Snorting chicken is about the most painful thing I've ever done while laughing and I do not recommend it.


Off to empty my bladder again, just in case.

6 comments:

  1. I needed a beverage warning of my own before reading this! You had me at "empty your bladder" and faking a severe case of tuberculosis and you finished me off with "snorting chicken".

    I swear, your friends must be constantly entertained by you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mayberry, You are so right! I never have a boring day anymore.

    CJ.
    1. I almost had that happen today with one of your posts, in fact, it happens a lot. That video I posted as well.
    2. I seem to do that so much too. Guests think Im psycho, maybe thats why they tip well, fear.
    3. Ive never done thing. weird.
    4. My brother and I used to get in trouble all the time for this. We people watched in church, made fun of poor old ladies, and couldnt stop laughing.
    5. I dont do that much. Every now and then, but if you see it happening, you better ask what it is.
    6. *silence* Wish Id seen it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I bet you wish you'd seen it. You caused it.

    It hurt.

    But now I get to trot out the ultracool icebreaker, "Hey, who here besides me knows how to snort chicken?"

    ReplyDelete
  4. 1. Check
    2. Haven't done that, but while carrying other assorted heavy or hot things. :D
    3. Check (just the other day in fact!) I think I went with option B
    4. Check
    5. Oh yes, check and double check
    6. Heh, not yet, thank goodness!

    My mom once mentioned she wished she could bottle up my laughter and sell it. It's apparently very infectious.

    And the all time best result of laughing really hard was when I swore I pulled a muscle doing it. At the time John Elway was still QB of the Broncos and he'd strained a rib muscle so I let loose with what is now an infamous line:

    "I laughed so hard I hurt myself like John Elway."

    :D My mom still gets the giggles when she uses it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'm sympathetic. I think if you really know how to laugh properly, you could injure yourself...maybe stretching exercises are in order along with emptying your bladder?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Lol I ALWAYS seem to find myself laughing on the floor when no one is around! I loved this blog!

    ReplyDelete

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