A toast to my laughter
Tuesday, Mar. 23, 2004 12:10 p.m.
I finally decided to buy a television set and it arrived last night. A 20-inch JVC. Having lived for three months without one, I realise how little I need it, and ironically, how much I miss it. I watch on average just 4-5 hours of TV a week (American Idol, CSI, Law & Order, Survivor), but the presence of a TV in my house comforts me. It's a vital link to the outside world. I don't read the papers very often because my day starts early and by the time I get home, the news would be even older so it's not worth reading anymore. With the TV, I get instant gratification, the latest news delivered into my room.
But it isn't the news that I remember most from yesterday evening's maiden channel-surfing adventure. It was an interview with Mike Myers in Inside The Actors Studio. I am a huge fan of his, and 'Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery' is still one of my all-time favourite movies. The wonderful thing is, the man seems to be innately funny. The audience kept cracking up with every few words that he spoke and I was cackling along with them. I think it is such a wonderful gift, to be able to make people laugh.
Apparently I have something of that talent, though nowhere as impressive as Myers's. People tell me I have a wicked sense of humour that can go either way, mortally wound people when I turn vicious, or make them break out into loud, unapologetic laughter. Even my laugh makes people laugh. I don't know why. K calls it an explosion of sound, sometimes so unexpected as to be startling, but something about it tickles people so that they end up laughing simply because I'm laughing. I recorded my laughter once on the computer, when I was on a video editing course and we were playing around with sound clips. Frankly, when I listened to it I thought it was spine-chilling. I sounded like a witch, no offence to any Wiccans out there, but a witch as portrayed in the popular imagination. Like the Wicked Witch of the West in 'The Wizard of Oz'. Only I'm convinced I sound ten times more evil. (I can see my friends and colleagues nodding, some of them muttering, "That's cos you are evil." Jerks.)
The thing is, it never occurred to me that my laughter was a good thing until recently, when a colleague noted that the staff room has been quiet and tense recently, and she felt that the reason was because the person who contributed the most laughter hasn't been doing a lot of laughing. That person being me. I do have a counterpart who sits at the other end of the staff room, but her recent contribution to humour was singing 'London Bridge is Falling Down' as she entered the staff room after a disastrous lesson. That's right, not exactly funny. Sign of unraveling.
So I am happy that in such depressing times in the workplace, my laughter counted for something. It signified mirth and made the place more cheerful. At least there is a place for my laughter now. For the longest time, my mother's sole aim in life seemed to be to get me to feel shame that I did not have a feminine laugh that's indistinguishable from the sound of a gurgling brook or a tinkling bell. Give me a break, Mom.
Older entries
Ramadan - 08 October 2006
Where I Have Been - 03 October 2006
Baby Talk - 10 August 2006
6 Weeks of Separation - 16 July 2006
Unacceptable Rudeness - 21 June 2006