The Funny Things in Life

by Judy Ma

Some people laugh at the immature things in life like dirty words while others laugh at the more painful things just to make it seem a little better like how the government works. Ever since we were born, most of us have had those little high pitched giggles. We would attract attention from the obese aunt that applies an extra coating of lipstick just to ruin it with kisses and slobber all over our innocent little faces. We would attract attention from the all sorts of strangers at playgrounds such as ‘creepy man at bench’ who always holds a wrinkled newspaper in front of his body while his eyes are glued to the plastic play structures. These laughs of ours change as we get older, some laughs changing in better ways than others.

I have what is called the silent yet deadly laugh, not to be mistaken for passing gas in any manner. When I laugh at something that I find is really hilarious and to the bone funny, my vocal cords decides that they no longer want to work and my laugh becomes silent. This habit of mine developed at an early age sometime during elementary school when the girl with self-esteem problem bully told me that my laugh was hideous. I thought my laugh was alright, but a bully was a bully and that phrase stuck to me, stealing my laugh away from me. Even though my laugh is silent though, it is still contagious just like any other laugh. When a person laughs to the point where they can’t make a sound anymore, but is hopefully still gasping for air, others tend to survey the room to look at facial expressions. I have the priceless teary eyes squinted closed, head swaying, mouth wide open showing two rows of pearly teeth for the whole world to see kind of expression. People see how ridiculous each other look and one joke becomes another one and other laughs being to join in.

There is the ‘I can be as cute as a pig laugh’ which involves a smooth laugh interrupted by a loud snort. The laugh gradually builds as if the person has the hiccups, snorting but controllably. Then as the joke or point of humor intensifies, so does the laugh. The Hiccups turn into stuffy nose sleeping at night which turns into a skipping soundtrack and finally into a hoof stomping donkey. Snorting laughs are usually rarer to find compared to other laughs, perhaps one in every thirty laughers. Sometimes the person laughing doesn’t even realize this habit until someone points it out to them.

There is the violent ‘I like to hurt myself to show how funny the joke is’ laugh where hand clapping and smacking is involved and the notorious slapping of the knee. Just like the ‘I can be as cute as a pig laugh,’ this laugh is gradual. Sometimes the slapping on knee is so fast that he or she would be able to cause a small draft in the room, picking up bits of dust and corners of loose paper. Or this laugh can get to the point where the laughers hand slowly migrates from their body, to the closest object next to them, usually another person. The slapping commences on the innocent bystander’s upper thighs or arms and shoulders eventually turning the laughs turns into wild glares and a questionable, hey! What are you doing? Stop hitting me will you!

There is the ‘are you okay’ laugh. This laugh is a laugh where the laugher starts crying rivers of tears and everyone around him or her can’t be sure whether or not it’s because of laughing anymore. Crying has a lot of similarities to laughing actually. It can make people uncomfortable if it just came out of the blue. They both can be loud and high pitched. No one needs to learn how to cry or laugh, they’re both just really second nature. So when someone is laughing to the point where their face is soaked with tears, well I guess memories are just made when something is that funny.

And then there is the suck-up laugh where someone would take decades explaining a story that could have been simplified with a quick ‘long story short,’ and ends with a lame not funny at all punch line. But, because that someone held your letter grade and key to getting out of high school, or maybe that someone held your monthly pay check at a crummy job that you needed to pay for your expensive significant other, or perhaps that someone is your expensive significant other, and if you don’t laugh – well it’s just all bad from there. That someone clears their throat, and stands there looking rejected. So in order to avoid that, you force out a little fake laugh with a ‘oh your so funny!’ at the end, face plastered with a crooked smile the whole time, from beginning to end. Here I come ivy leagues!

Then there is the infamous pity laugh. Your friends have done it, you have done it; somebody says something ridiculous or doesn’t make any sense, but because that person looks as if they would faint if no one laughed at their joke, you are generous enough to throw out a few chuckles. Actually, this one is pretty much the same as the suck-up laugh, but with out a crooked smile, just a long sigh afterwards. And usually, the person throwing out the horrible joke realizes that you either didn’t get it or finally realized how ridiculous it sounds by your obvious pity laugh, and end up turning bright pink.

The sarcastic almost evil ha ha laugh is the most hilarious laugh within a group of friends but almost life threatening if you’re a black sheep. This is to say that within a close group of friends, if one friend was to ‘roast’ and make fun of another friend, then the sarcastic laugh is used. Because everyone is close with each other, majority is laughing hysterically and the sarcastic laugh turns into a real chuckle. However, if that person that was getting made fun of totally did not understand the jokes and took them personally on a whole other level, then the ‘sarcastic evil life threatening, I’ll stand over your bed laugh’ is used.

The laugh that hurts even worse though is the ‘wet laugh’. Every time someone is about to take a drink of water, it seems as if the whole world notices and tries to do anything and everything to make the water go from the persons mouth, to up their nose or down the wrong pipe. Worse yet is when you have a mouth full of water and just heard a really funny joke but can’t risk swallowing. You start bending over, one hand over mouth while the other is flapping in the air; running around the room for a safe corner incase your mouth turns into an instant water gun. It gets to the point where you just have to give up and swallow because you have some odd notion that the water would just go straight down – let the burn and coughs begin.

Then there is the ‘uncalled for what in the world is wrong with you laugh’. Most of us have done this before at one point or another; where someone says something that is serious and not intended to be funny but you end up rolling on your sides laughing. You try to sustain it all you can, by trying to think of something else, diverging your attention else where, but they just keep restating and rephrasing the announcement. At first you find the statement really funny, but then once you see that you’re the only one laughing, the laugh slows down and then the atmosphere becomes dead awkward. The person throws the ‘you totally crossed the line’ look and you kind of shrink into your shell.

Then we all know the ‘unique laugh’. There’s always that one person in a social group that has a really, I mean really unique laugh. It could be a hundred percent outrageous or extremely loud or down right high pitched, but none the less, unique. It doesn’t matter what he or she is laughing at, just hearing the laugh makes a domino effect of more laughs. You try to see what you can to do make the person laugh, just so that you can hear it one more time. The feeling becomes overwhelming and addicting and you start pulling stunts and tripping over your own shoes, just to hear the laugh. Eventually, you realize that you’ve become some obsessed Britney Spears on the road concert fan that you decide that what you are doing is just weird and wrong.

We can’t forget about the ‘getting caught while laughing by yourself’ laugh. Your on the computer, instant messaging with a few friends and you get into a really heated discussion about something absolutely ridiculous. One line after another the pun begins to build up and the whole time your sitting there with your lips pressed together, laughing lines building up around the corner of your eyes. The person sitting a few seats away from you starts glancing at you from the corner of their eyes and is probably thinking that there is something really special going on in your head. But no matter how hard you try not to laugh out loud while chatting with someone online, you end up exploding with quite but uncontrollable laughs.

Then there’s the ‘unexpected, there’s no way that laugh came from you’ laugh. Maybe the muscular football jock throws a few high pitched laughs out. Or the girl from next door with the matching red convertible laughs an ‘I can be as cute as a pig’ laugh, very attractive. This is just like how some really big people are scared of tiny micro size spiders, they don’t make sense to the naked eye. Looks can often be deceiving.

My grandma has always had this laugh that sounds like she’s saying key over and over again instead of ha. She’s a short, chubby, old Chinese lady who loves to eat peanuts all day while watching random TV channels in English that she doesn’t under stand. There was one night when I happened to walk into the living room and saw her in one of her laughing fits. Her silver teeth were covered in chunks of peanuts. I looked at the TV and saw that America’s Funniest Home Video’s was on showing clips of silly babies with furry dogs eating together. I guess humor is a universal language.