This might be a strange thing to say - but isn't it weird how we all laugh at different things?
My mum, not really one of life's great philosophers, probably hit the nail on the head when she exclaimed: “Funny things make me laugh.”
Profound? Or just a statement of the obvious? It's hard to say, but it probably captures the essence of it better than any professor could ever do.
I also find it interesting that no matter where we hail from, a laugh when you hear it is instantly recognisable. There really are no cultural differences - it's all just a variation of a giggle (what a fantastic word!), or a Ha Ha, Ho Ho or He He!
I have always been blessed with the ability to find something to laugh at in virtually any situation. It was a bit of a curse at school to be honest, resulting in many detentions and letters home to parents.
What made this situation particularly hard to handle was having to re-visit one of these indiscretions when faced with authority.
Picture this if you will: a scene in a classroom with a teacher that a class used to torment to the point of madness (you have all been there I know) and it gets to that point where the teacher absolutely loses it and reads the riot act making one of those the-Next-Boy-Who-Makes-A-Sound-Will-Be-In-Big- Trouble ultimatums.
As the momentary silence hit the room, that was the moment that my anxiety level would rise to breaking point - desperately hoping that nothing would happen to make me explode into fits of giggles.
Without fail, one of my classmates would take that opportunity to emit one of those bodily function noises - arguably and universally, the funniest thing in the whole world!
I would collapse, catch the full wrath of the teacher and be asked to explain what was so funny. Now that's a tough call - and it's an explanation that quite frankly you can never give.
'Somebody Made a Noise, Sir' just never seemed to cut it or satisfy the injured party. The only way this scenario gets any worse is if I am then instructed to see the Headmaster to explain to him what was so funny and why I was such a disruptive influence.
When faced with our sour-faced authoritarian - potentially looking at endless detentions or a possible caning - you would have thought that the gravity of the situation would stem the urge to laugh. Wrong.
However funny the initial incident was that caused my loss of control, the comedic effect was amplified 10-fold when asked to recount it. Nightmare.
I recently learned that I haven't outgrown my inability to control my instinct to laugh at stuff, uncontrollably, in classroom-type situations. I am currently undertaking a photography course with my absolute best friend - who shares that magical wavelength of finding all the stuff that I find funny, equally funny.
When our lecturer was doing a show-and-tell through a series of photographs he had taken to illustrate difficult exposures, he pulled up a slide of a rather boring door in some ancient house. From the outset, not a classic image for comic potential you will admit.
He went on to explain that, yes, this picture is quite uninspiring as a wide shot, but maybe more interesting in some aspects of close-up. So he clicked to a slide of the door knocker, and earnestly launched into an explanation of this new image.
Now - call me juvenile - but this door knocker did resemble something else. So I sat there looking at this image thinking 'Is it just me that thinks that looks like something else?' Unable to keep this to myself, I whispered my observation to my partner in crime - and that was it!
The studious atmosphere of the room was broken by our lone sniggering - our desire to hold the hilarity in making the task all the more difficult. It was one of those moments when you just have to look away from each other and desperately meditate to maintain some semblance of self-control (and maturity!).
This is where you would have thought that evolution would have given us gills (like fish) so that when trying to hold laughter in we can still breathe! I think the teacher suddenly twigged what was going on and frantically tried to move on and re-arrange the slides - but in his panic - it just kept ... popping back up!
I was practically in tears and sporadically honking like a seal. The only sign of maturity that shone through was that I didn't mercilessly ask the teacher loads of follow-up questions on that slide - something I would definitely have done back at school!
I seem to have spent most of my life laughing at one thing or another - I am surprised that I don't have a face like Mick Jagger, so creased up and scarred with laughter lines. But I have found that it's the one thing that gets me through life's problems.
Forget support groups and therapy - give me South Park, Anchorman, Jim Carrey, and people falling over ... any day of the week!
As they say - laugh and the whole world is laughing with you. And if not, we are laughing at you and pointing!
Til Nxt Time.. G*NICE!
