Laughing in the face of it all

There is something that is a part of me, yet bigger than me. Something I cannot deny and sometimes cannot control, and usually in the most inopportune moments. As a kid, when I was up to the usual mischief to be then scolded by my mum, sometimes I found myself not even listening to what she was saying in her most serious firey-dragon tone, my focus was on trying not to laugh.

I could feel it in my face muscles, starting in my cheeks and spreading outwards towards my ears, my lips clinching tighter together in an attempt to stop my lips from turning upward in to a grin. Sometimes I managed to stop myself from smirking but my eyes would never lie, I was crying laughing on the inside and you could see through them. This obviously would get me in to even more trouble. You can take a guess at the amount of days of my childhood I spent grounded.

I would do the same at school infront of a teacher. "A pupil with great potential but has this sometimes jester-like attitude which inflicts on his work" was something I remember being written by my Science teacher in a yearly report. The thing is, I still do the same. Even right now, I am writing with a smirk, not that I have done any wrong and need to hide it or risk being scolded by one of my cats laid next to me here on the table next to my laptop. As serious as he sometimes looks, his eyes are playful. Maybe I have a partner in crime.

There are many other episodes, too many to mention, maybe too many court jester performances to recall. One thing though is certain, I don't take myself seriously, I can laugh about my life, in many ways.

If I think about my 30th birthday, I don't remember at all anything resembling a 'coming of age' moment. Infact despite the alcohol, I remember the whole night with two of my best friends and respective girlfriends in Leeds, England, a curry followed by cocktails around town. The night ended back at one of my mates' flat where I was staying and resulted in a few hours of Playstation Tiger Woods Golf.

We delighted in our lunacy at the end of every hole to the computer-caddy voice saying "we suggest putter, you have selected driver" has creased us up ever since as soon as one of us brings it back in to any given conversation. I do play hockey and not golf after all. This was all between using a footpump to inflate my mattress for the night only realising after over an hour the pump had a rip in it and no air was going in. We still try to figure out if alcohol or just male immaturity was to blame. Seeing as I still tried to beat up Batman while being Robin in two-player-on-the-same-side-mode with my young nephew on the PS when I hit my 40s, and much to his 'Stop it Uncle Andrew!' while saying in my Heath Ledger-Joker voice: "It's simple, we kill the Batman." I think booze gets off the hook here.

In another occasion, we were passengers in another colleague friend's car in a late night incident. We all worked the bars of a local nightclub and after-hours house parties were a standard weekend thing. Upon driving home at dawn - stopping first in an all-night garage for snacks - on a greasy, rain-it road that bowed under a motorway under-pass, our designated-driver swerved to avoid what I remember seemed like a small wild animal, only to lose control, spin and end up hitting a fence, smashing my front passenger window. The car more or less a write-off. We were shocked, shaken and realised immediately, how lucky we had been. This was soon doused as my mate in the back passenger seat behind me broke the silence with "Oh for fuck's sake, you've got glass in my bloody sandwich!" More chortles ensued as after the spinning accident we couldn't figure out which direction back up the incline we had to go to call for assistence.

I also have a good friend in Italy where I used to live who is the same. The chips can be down and we may have been dealt a crap hand, but no matter how bad things seem, he always has a battutina as they say in Italian - a little joke that brings laughs all round to ease the pressure. It is something that I value dearly in life. It's contagious and appeals to my silly psyche.

I can't do the morning hangovers any more, but I long to wake up with that achy feeling in my ribs, trying not to laugh at the laughs of the previous night, which in turn makes me laugh and makes me hurt, especially as present friends, give you the 'hair (or better said, laugh) of the dog' and purposely add to your pain to get more giggles. But in my own warped way, I also want to be faced with something serious, to then trying to keep a straight face while being told just how serious it is; after all it is something that is part of who I am. I have often been able to see the funny side of things. Laughter is apart of the human race, it's a comunal activity, we bond through laughter, to me it has the upmost importance. It's been scientifically proven that even apes and primates enjoy a chortle and that is where we have descended from.

We could end up going deep here, delving in to the science of it all, but that's not what I want to do. I just want to keep it simple and well, have a chortle. I want my ribs to hurt again, I want to be silly. I want to exercise my British toilet humour titter. I want to beat a car with a stick like John Cleese, I want to watch someone fall at the bar like Del Boy Trotter. I really want to indulge in all the silliness that does the circuit on social media.

At the end of the day, I believe even the most serious person in the world just wants to laugh and have fun. I have quoted here before (read here: Another deep thought) about how 'a wise man can pick up a grain of sand and envision the whole universe, while the silly man will lie down in some seaweed and roll around until he's completely draped in it, then he'll stand up and say "Hey I'm Vineman" '. I don't know how much wisdom I have gained over the years, but truth is, right now I want to don my cape of vine.

Maybe we all have an inner-jester at our core that just wants to let rip in the face of a stern world. Let's be downright raucous and laugh in the face of Covid-19, it's a survival technique - just ask the primates, after all they have used it to get by for thousands of years.